Freedom of association and all institutions coming with it have not been accepted by the Chinese government. Instead, Chinese social organization administration is based upon the concept of association held by the Communist Party of China. The Chinese government had adopted a “total control” model of social organization administration in the era of totalitarianism before the “Opening-up and Reform”, leaving almost no room for social organizations to survive, because the CPC had regarded social organizations as “revolutionary” and “deconstructive”. The Chinese (...) has adopted a graduated control system to administrate social organizations in the era of authoritarianism after the “Opening-up and Reform”, treating social organizations differently according to their threats to the ruling order and their utilities for economic development, because the CPC has viewed social organizations as a “challenging” but “auxiliary” power. The on-going “innovation of registration and administration of social organizations” is not a return to international standard regarding social organization administration in China, but only partial reform of the graduate control system still based upon the CPC’s conception of association as “challenging” but “auxiliary”. Social organizations capable of providing public goods in areas of economic development and social services are given more favorable treatment by the government while political and religious organizations are still tightly controlled by the government. (shrink)

Academic engagement describes students’ involvement in academic learning and achievement. This paper reports the psychometric properties of the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI) with a sample of 3992 university students from nine different countries and regions from Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. The USEI operationalizes a trifactorial conceptualization of academic engagement (behavioral, emotional and cognitive). Construct validity was assessed by means of confirmatory factor analysis and reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega coefficients. Weak measurement (...) invariance was observed for country/region, while strong measurement invariance was observed for gender and area of graduation. The USEI scores showed predictive validity for dropout intention, self-rated academic performance, and course approval rate while divergent validity with student burnout scores was also evident. Overall, the results indicate that the USEI can produce reliable and valid data on academic engagement of university students across the world. (shrink)

In multimodal multiobjective optimization problems, multiple Pareto optimal sets, even some good local Pareto optimal sets, should be reserved, which can provide more choices for decision-makers. To solve MMOPs, this paper proposes an evolutionary algorithm with clustering-based assisted selection strategy for multimodal multiobjective optimization, in which the addition operator and deletion operator are proposed to comprehensively consider the diversity in both decision and objective spaces. Specifically, in decision space, the union population is partitioned into multiple clusters by using a density-based (...) clustering method, aiming to assist the addition operator to strengthen the population diversity. Then, a number of weight vectors are adopted to divide population into N subregions in objective space. Moreover, in the deletion operator, the solutions in the most crowded subregion are first collected into previous clusters, and then the worst solution in the most crowded cluster is deleted until there are N solutions left. Our algorithm is compared with other multimodal multiobjective evolutionary algorithms on the well-known benchmark MMOPs. Numerical experiments report the effectiveness and advantages of our proposed algorithm. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the development and piloting of a new methodology for illuminating the socio-material constitution of data objects and flows as data move between different sites of practice. The data journeys approach contributes to the development of critical, qualitative methodologies that can address the geographic and temporal scale of emerging knowledge infrastructures, and capture the ‘life of data’ from their initial generation through to re-use in different contexts. We discuss the theoretical development of the data journeys methodology (...) and the application of the approach on a project examining meteorological data on their journey from initial production through to being re-used in climate science and financial markets. We then discuss three key conceptual findings from this project about: the socio-material constitution of digital data objects, ‘friction’ in the movement of data through space and time and the mutability of digital data as a material property that contributes to driving the movement of data between different sites of practice. (shrink)

This paper investigates the association between board characteristics and the company’s corporate social responsibility assurance decision in China. By examining 2054 firm-years of Chinese listed companies with CSR reports from 2008 to 2012, we find that firms with a large board size, more female directors, and separation of CEO and chairman positions are more likely to engage in CSR assurance. Gender diversity also influences the CSR assurance provider choice. However, board independence and overseas background of the CEO do not affect (...) the CSR assurance decision. Inconsistent with our prediction, firms with foreign directors are less likely to engage in voluntary CSR assurance. In summary, this research provides in-depth insights into the determinants of Chinese firms’ voluntary CSR assurance. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to compare the learning effectiveness of peer tutored problem-based learning and conventional teaching of nursing ethics in Taiwan. The study adopted an experimental design. The peer tutored problem-based learning method was applied to an experimental group and the conventional teaching method to a control group. The study sample consisted of 142 senior nursing students who were randomly assigned to the two groups. All the students were tested for their nursing ethical discrimination ability both before (...) and after the educational intervention. A learning satisfaction survey was also administered to both groups at the end of each course. After the intervention, both groups showed a significant increase in ethical discrimination ability. There was a statistically significant difference between the ethical discrimination scores of the two groups (P < 0.05), with the experimental group on average scoring higher than the control group. There were significant differences in satisfaction with self-motivated learning and critical thinking between the groups. Peer tutored problem-based learning and lecture-type conventional teaching were both effective for nursing ethics education, but problem-based learning was shown to be more effective. Peer tutored problem-based learning has the potential to enhance the efficacy of teaching nursing ethics in situations in which there are personnel and resource constraints. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated levels of stress and anxiety for P-12 teachers around the globe. The present study aims to understand teachers’ emotional experiences and feelings of burnout during the pandemic, and how individual (i.e., emotion regulation strategies) or contextual factors (e.g., school administrative support) intersect with different facets of their emotional experiences. Using a sequential explanatory mixed methods design, we collected and examined survey and interview data from teachers in the southeastern United States. The structural equation model confirmed (...) the relationships among the following latent variables: negative emotion, emotion regulation, autonomy support, burnout, and teacher enthusiasm. Qualitative findings provide further insight in the contextualized nature of these relationships and how they play out across various schools and districts. (shrink)

While previous research considering the emergence of strategic alliances has typically viewed their formation through a single theoretical lens, we suggest that multiple theoretical perspectives are needed to understand their complexity. This research conceptually integrates the resource-based view and institutional theory to assess variations in firm-level motivations to form strategic alliances. Applying these ideas to the context of complex environmental problems, we propose that strategic alliances typically are either competency- or legitimacy-oriented, and that four structural dimensions characterize both types of (...) alliances—organization learning, partner diversity, governance structure, and partner relations. We present research propositions that describe how alliances differ along these dimensions, and offer an important broader perspective on alliance formation that is applicable towards understanding their strategic and social outcomes. (shrink)

It is often assumed that corporate social responsibility is a very promising way for corporations to improve their reputations, and a positive link between practicing CSR and corporate reputation is supported by empirical evidence. However, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this relationship. In addition, the effects of not practicing CSR on corporate reputation have received little attention thus far. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the cause-and-effect relationships between practicing CSR and corporate reputation. To this (...) end, the paper draws on a psychological framework, in particular, on insights from expectancy violations theory and attribution theory. Building on the ideal-type distinction between CSR in terms of voluntary engagement for society and the prevention of irresponsible behavior, the paper develops four propositions that unveil some fundamental cause-and-effect relationships between practicing CSR, irresponsible behavior, and corporate reputation. In doing so, it also addresses the question under which conditions CSR leads to a buffering or backfiring effect on corporate reputation in the event of irresponsible behavior. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to resolve the tension between Kant’s doctrine of the highest good and his entire philosophical system. The concept of the highest good is the first major ambiguity of the doctrine. There are three pairs of ambiguities: immanent-transcendent; justice-perfection; and individual-community. They are able to form eight combinations. Corresponding to the various combinations and conceptions of the highest good, interpreters also conceive different reasons for the necessity of the doctrine as well as various conditions of (...) its applicability. For example, some emphasize its religious dimension, whereas others understand it in the political sense. In this paper, I adopt a different approach in understanding the highest good’s systematic meaning as the moral confirmation, and suggest that only a transcendent, perfect and communal concept of the highest good can provide the most consistent doctrine. Additionally, it explains the importance of the different branches (such as philosophies of religion and of politics) of Kant’s system. (shrink)

Tacit knowledge sharing discussed in this study is important in the area of business ethics, because an unwillingness to share knowledge that may hurt an organization’s survival is seen as being seriously unethical. In the proposed model of this study, distributive justice, procedural justice, and cooperativeness influence tacit knowledge sharing indirectly via two mediators: organizational commitment and trust in co-workers. Accordingly, instrumental ties and expressive ties influence tacit knowledge sharing indirectly only via the mediation of trust in co-workers. The model (...) is assessed by using data from different companies’ employees, who attend an evening college in Taiwan for advance study. The test results of this study indicate that tacit knowledge sharing is affected by distributive justice, procedural justice, and cooperativeness indirectly via organizational commitment. Additionally, tacit knowledge sharing is also affected by distributive justice, instrumental ties, and expressive ties via trust in co-workers. The paths from procedural justice and cooperativeness to trust in co-workers are shown to be insignificant. Managerial implications of the empirical findings are also provided. (shrink)

Sharing and helping are important issues in ethical research. This study proposes a model based on flow theory by postulating key antecedents as the critical drivers of knowledge sharing and interemployee helping. Flow is the holistic sensation that employees feel when they act with total immersion and engagement, facilitating individuals' reciprocal activities such as knowledge sharing and interemployee helping. In the proposed model, knowledge sharing is influenced by flow experience directly and also indirectly via the mediation of interemployee helping. Accordingly, (...) the flow experience is influenced simultaneously by four exogenous factors related to individuals' perception about their work: work skills, self-fulfillment in challenges, perceived control, and vividness. This study contributes to the knowledge management literature by extending flow theory to the area of knowledge sharing and interemployee helping, by validating idiosyncratic antecedent drivers of the flow theory, and by performing a practical operationalization of the flow experience. This research also provides managerial implications for business leaders to boost their employees' ethical behavior in terms of sharing and helping. (shrink)

Greenway is a kind of corridors in the city that takes natural elements as the main constituent foundation and connects open spaces with functions such as leisure and recreation. The assessment of the built greenway is a review of the past construction experiences, and it is also a supplement and improvement to the future greenway planning concept system, which has important academic and application value. This study will explore how greenway design factors influenced the local cyclists’ perception of the landscape (...) using on-site questionnaire and photo rating method. The results indicated that greenways with continuous cycling paths, high security awareness, open landscapes, and rich human activities evoke positive perceptions. Among the visual elements, natural elements such as plants and sky are more favorable than artificial elements. The research results show that the formation of greenway cyclists’ landscape imagery is affected by visual perception elements, which suggests that special consideration should be given to the laws of cyclists’ mental perception when designing greenways. (shrink)

AimTo investigate the status of positive mental characters and humanistic care ability among Chinese nursing students, and confirm the association between positive mental characters and humanistic care ability.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted. Nine hundred eighty-one Chinese nursing students were recruited from hospitals and community healthcare services in Changsha, Hunan, China. Three different self-reported questionnaires were applied: The Demographic Characteristics Questionnaire, Humanistic care ability of Nursing Undergraduates Assessment Scale and Positive Mental Characters Scale for Chinese College Students. Pearson correlation analysis and (...) multiple liner regression analysis were performed to analyze the association between positive mental character and humanistic care ability for Chinese nursing students.ResultsThe mean scores of nursing students' humanistic care ability and positive mental character were 125.94 ± 21.19, 233.18 ± 38.59, respectively. The Pearson correlation results showed that positive mental character was significantly associated with humanistic care ability. Multiple liner regression analysis indicated that positive mental characters, four dimensions of courage, humanity, justice and transcendence in positive mental character, care from classmates were found to be independent predictors of humanistic care ability.ConclusionPositive mental characters are important considerations in the development, implementation and evaluation of humanistic care ability interventions. (shrink)

With the development of modern information technology, the flipped classroom teaching mode came into being. It has gradually become one of the hotspots of contemporary educational circles and has been applied to various disciplines at the same time. The domestic research on the flipped classroom teaching mode is still in the exploratory stage. The application of flipped classroom teaching mode is still in the exploratory stage. It also has many problems, such as low class efficiency, poor teacher-student interaction, outdated teaching (...) modes, not student-centered, etc., which lead to poor students’ enthusiasm for learning. Therefore, the current English flipped classroom teaching mode still needs to be tested and revised in practice. Combined with emotion recognition technology, this paper analyzes speech emotion recognition, image emotion recognition, and audition emotion recognition technology and conducts a revision test for the current English flipped classroom teaching mode. It uses the SVM algorithm for one-to-one method and dimension discretization for emotion recognition, and finds that the recognition results after different dimension classification recognition are improved for each emotion. Among them, the recognition rate of different dimension classification recognition methods is 2.6% higher than that of one-to-one method. This shows that under the same conditions, the emotion recognition technology of different dimension classification recognition methods is higher. (shrink)

In recent years, the responsibility of corporations has been widely discussed. However, there is no general agreement as regards what CSR is exactly. Due to the indefinite nature of CSR, the term actually embraces several ideas and different contents. A very widespread understanding of CSR defines the subject as (strategic) corporate philanthropy, including operations such as corporate giving, corporate volunteering, corporate foundations, etc. The philanthropic approach to CSR implies that corporations must take responsibility beyond their core business activities. This article (...) argues that a philanthropic approach to CSR is problematic. Moreover, such a conceptualisation strengthens the perception that making Profits is immoral; therefore, it endangers the basis of corporations' license-to-operate in the long run. (shrink)

What role does traditional ecological knowledge play in the lives of smallholder farmers in post-conflict communities as they cope with the destructive impacts of war? In many cases, military weapons, such as unexploded bombs, are left behind in the surrounding landscape, forcing farmers to adapt their livelihood practices to the increased risk of death and injury. We analyze trends in the local production of knowledge in Ratanak Kiri province, Cambodia, an area heavily bombarded by the US Air Force during the (...) Vietnam War. We argue that the system of traditional ecological knowledge has adapted to include basic information on bomb identification, location, and management strategies. This factual approach gives individuals the flexibility to generate their own views on whether they perceive unexploded ordnance as a violent hazard and/or an economic commodity. In a relatively short 50-year time period, the body of knowledge has been quickly accumulated and culturally transmitted to family and neighbors. Our findings suggest that traditional ecological knowledge should not be reduced to a static and ancient form of collective memory. We call for the expansion of the concept of traditional ecological knowledge to include short-term and dynamic processes of knowledge generation. (shrink)

This study examined the effect of emotional context on the semantic memory of subsequent emotional words during discourse comprehension in two eye-tracking experiments. Four-sentence discourses were used as experimental materials. The first three sentences established an emotional or neutral context, while the fourth contained an emotional target word consistent with the preceding emotional context's valence. The discourses were presented twice using the text change paradigm, where the target words were replaced with strongly - or weakly-related words during the second presentation. (...) Thus, four conditions were included in the present study: Emotional-strongly-related, Emotional-weakly-related, Neutral-strongly-related and Neutral-weakly-related. In Experiment 1, negative contexts and negative target words were used, whereas in Experiment 2, positive contexts and positive target words were used. The results revealed a semantic relatedness effect, whereby the strongly-related words have lower change detection accuracy, longer reading times and more fixations in both Experiments 1 and 2. Furthermore, across both experiments, the magnitude of the semantic relatedness effect was greater in the emotionally congruent contexts than in the neutral contexts. These results suggest that emotional context could increase efforts to change the discrimination of subsequent words and demonstrate an important role of emotional context on semantic memory during discourse processing. (shrink)

Dual innovation, which includes exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, is crucial for firms to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage. The knowledge base of firms greatly influences or even determines the scope, direction, and path of their dual-innovation activities, which drive their innovation process and produce different innovation performances. This study uses data source patents obtained by 285 focal firms in the Chinese new-energy vehicle industry in the period 2015–2020. Five knowledge-base features are selected by analyzing the correlation and multicollinearity, and (...) four different firm clusters are found by using the k-means clustering algorithm. Based on the classification and regression tree algorithm, we mine the potential decision rules governing the dual-innovation performance of firms. The results show that the exploratory innovation performance of firms in different clusters is mainly affected by two different knowledge-base features. Knowledge-base scale is a key factor affecting the exploitative innovation performance of firms. Firms in different clusters can improve their dual-innovation performance by rationally tuning the combination of knowledge-base features. (shrink)

Sufficiency principles generally state that it is especially important for justice that people have enough of certain goods, but it can be hard to give a convincing answer as to what level of goods counts as enough. This paper examines a recent sufficiency view by George Sher, who argues that the threshold level of resources and opportunities that the state should provide for each citizen is whatever level gives one enough leverage to obtain further resources and opportunities without inordinate difficulty (...) or sacrifice. The argument relies on the idea that, with regard to resources and opportunities, the sufficient ability to live one’s life effectively requires only that one have enough of them as leverage. While Sher’s general account regarding “what counts as enough?” is promising in countering certain challenges typically raised against sufficiency principles, the approach to determine the threshold of resources and opportunities in terms of leverage is problematic. (shrink)

The specialist field of intellectual disability nursing has been subjected to a number of changes since the move towards deinstitutionalisation from the 1970s. Government policies sought to change the nature of the disability workforce from what was labelled as a medicalised approach, towards a more socially oriented model of support. Decades on however, many nurses who specialise in the care of people with intellectual disability are still employed. In Australia, the advent of the National Disability Insurance Scheme offers an apt (...) moment to reflect upon these decades of specialised nursing care as the context of this nursing care will continue to evolve. A review of the published literature was conducted to explore what has shaped the field in the past and how this might inform the future of this speciality area under new policy and service contexts. People with intellectual disability have specific health and support needs that require a specialised workforce. Specialist nurses continue to be needed for people with intellectual disability. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949/2002. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press) is generally considered a landmark in the quest to refute Cartesian dualism. The work contains many inspirational ideas and mainly posits behavioral disposition as the referent of mind in order to refute mind–body dualism. In this article, I show that the Buddhist theory of ‘non-self’ is also at odds with the belief that a substantial soul exists distinct from the physical body and further point out similarities between (...) the Buddhist outlook and Ryle’s ideas in three parts. First, I illustrate that Ryle’s ‘category mistake’ has certain points in common with the Buddhist refutation of ‘self’. Within the Buddhist framework, referents such as ‘mind’ and ‘self’ are merely imputed terms. The presumed existence of an independent substance such as a ‘soul’, when considered in isolation from the expedient usage of the term ‘mind’, can therefore also be viewed as a ‘category mistake’. Second, attempting to solve the questions of ‘what mind is’ and ‘how mind operates’ are two entirely different approaches to the study of mind. I argue that it is necessary to focus on ‘knowing-how’ rather than ‘knowing-that’, if we are to gain a more comprehensive understanding of mind and avoid any kind of category mistake such as those that follow from isolating the physical properties of brain or drawing inferences from a mystical soul. Third, I aim to show why investigating mind from the perspective of ‘dispositions’ of behavior is a valid approach. The Buddhist concept of karma-vāsanā elucidates the habitual tendency to act or not act in various situations. Based on this theory, I argue that the workings of the human mind bears strong links to the formation of karma and as such have important axiological implications that cannot be ignored. I conclude by pointing out that Ryle’s insightful ideas could in certain ways be complemented by the Buddhist theory of mind. In my view, his philosophy is not only a mediator between Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, but could perhaps also be seen as a mediator between traditional Eastern systems of thought and contemporary philosophies of mind. (shrink)

Face attractiveness can influence memory for previously seen faces. This effect has been shown to differ for young and older perceivers. Two parallel studies examined the moderation of both the age...

There is increasing interest in clarifying how different face emotion expressions are perceived by people from different cultures, of different ages and sex. However, scant availability of well-controlled emotional face stimuli from non-Western populations limit the evaluation of cultural differences in face emotion perception and how this might be modulated by age and sex differences. We present a database of East Asian face expression stimuli, enacted by young and older, male and female, Taiwanese using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). (...) Combined with a prior database, this present database consists of 90 identities with happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, surprised and neutral expressions amounting to 628 photographs. 20 young and 24 older East Asian raters scored the photographs for intensities of multiple-dimensions of emotions and induced affect. Multivariate analyses characterized the dimensionality of perceived emotions and quantified effects of age and sex. We also applied commercial software to extract computer-based metrics of emotions in photographs. Taiwanese raters perceived happy faces as one category, sad, angry, and disgusted expressions as one category, and fearful and surprised expressions as one category. Younger females were more sensitive to face emotions than younger males. Whereas older males showed reduced face emotion sensitivity, older female sensitivity was similar or accentuated relative to young females. Commercial software dissociated six emotions according to the FACS demonstrating that defining visual features were present. Our findings show that East Asians perceive a different dimensionality of emotions than Western-based definitions in face recognition software, regardless of age and sex. Critically, stimuli with detailed cultural norms are indispensable in interpreting neural and behavioral responses involving human facial expression processing. To this end, we add to the tools, which are available upon request, for conducting such research. (shrink)

This article does not intend to actually valuate intangible assets but focuses to investigate the relative value distribution of corporate intangible assets, and this links closely to the concept and application of value drivers. This is because we believe that drivers or attributes of the value significantly determine how the virtual value of these intangibles can be created for companies. We apply the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to the appraising process of intangible assets. The AHP method can mainly sort the (...) non-financial value drivers in order according to their weighted contributions. Therefore, the key purpose of this article is to develop a tentative model for the evaluation of intangible assets, which helps business to correctly appraise corporate value ratios and avoid bias due to mainly relying on financial statements when measuring an entity’s value. In addition, in view of the significant proportion of intangible assets over total assets in high-technology industries, this research, then, uses six industries in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan, as its research objects in order to test the applicability of its model, as well as exploring the value weights of intangible assets and its evaluation among different technology industries. Besides, the empirical result of this article is mainly to support business appraisal and thus improves the effectiveness of value-based management. (shrink)