Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been widely studied, little is known about whether it has implications for customer mistreatment. In this study, we aim to understand how and when CSR is related to customer incivility, a typical type of mistreatment in service contexts. Integrating the perspectives of social exchange theory and social identity theory, we theorize that CSR influences customer incivility via customer trust and customer identification, which are contingent on front-line employees' emotional labor (i.e., surface acting and deep (...) acting) during service interactions. In our two-source field study involving 332 employee–customer dyads, CSR promoted both customer trust and customer identification, which in turn reduced customer incivility. Moreover, the indirect relationship between CSR and customer incivility via customer trust (but not customer identification) was weakened by employee surface acting but strengthened by employee deep acting. Taken together, this study uncovers the relationship between CSR and customer mistreatment by exploring how and when CSR influences customer incivility, which advances the understanding of the customer-related implications of CSR. (shrink)

Objective:The purpose of this study was to describe the current situation of moral distress and to explore its influencing factors among Chinese nurses.Methods:This is an exploratory, descriptive design study. A total of 465 clinical nurses from different departments in three Grade-III, Level-A hospitals in Jinan, Shandong Province, completed the questionnaires, including demographics questionnaire, Chinese version of Moral Distress Scale–Revised, and Job Diagnostic Survey.Ethical considerations:The study was approved by the university ethics board and the local health service director.Results:The total score of (...) Moral Distress Scale–Revised was 36.01 ± 24.02 points. The mean frequency and intensity scores of moral distress were 1.13 ± 0.49 and 1.09 ± 0.58, respectively. The level of moral distress among Chinese clinical nurses was low, and the frequency and intensity of moral distress were on low to moderate level. The level of moral distress experienced by clinical nurses is associated with demographics features and job characteristics, including age, education degree, department, task significance, autonomy, and dealing with others.Conclusion:Our conclusion suggests that hospital and organizational administrations should attach much importance to the moral distress experienced by clinical nurses in China. Further studies should focus on interventions about how to reduce the levels of the frequency and intensity of moral distress among clinical nurses. (shrink)

The gradation of know-how is a prominent challenge to intellectualism. Know-how is prima facie gradable, whereas know-that is not, so the former is unlikely to be a species of the latter. Recently, Pavese refuted this challenge by explaining the gradation of know-how as concerning either the quantity or the quality of practical answers one knows to a question. Know-how per se remains absolute. This paper argues, however, that in addition to the quantity and quality of practical answers, know-how also differs (...) in how reliably the agent is supposed to fulfil the task given her default constitution. Intellectualism is still troubled by the gradability challenge. (shrink)

The complex chaotic dynamics and multistability of financial system are some important problems in micro- and macroeconomic fields. In this paper, we study the influence of two-delay feedback on the nonlinear dynamics behavior of financial system, considering the linear stability of equilibrium point under the condition of single delay and two delays. The system undergoes Hopf bifurcation near the equilibrium point. The stability and bifurcation directions of Hopf bifurcation are studied by using the normal form method and central manifold theory. (...) The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulation. Furthermore, one feature of the proposed financial chaotic system is that its multistability depends extremely on the memristor initial condition and the system parameters. It is shown that the nonlinear dynamics of financial chaotic system can be significantly changed by changing the values of time delays. (shrink)

This study draws on the substitutes for leadership theory to investigate the association of strengths-based leadership with employee turnover intention and the mediating role of felt obligation for constructive change and the moderating role of job control in the linkage. Data were collected using a three-wave survey from a sample of 317 employees working in a variety of enterprises in China. The multiple regression analyses with bootstrapping procedure were utilized to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that strengths-based leadership (...) negatively relates to turnover intention and felt obligation for constructive change partially mediates the relationship between strengths-based leadership and turnover intention. Furthermore, job control, acting as a substitute for strengths-based leadership, negatively moderates the indirect relationship between strengths-based leadership and turnover intention via felt obligation for constructive change. This study contributes to the literature of strengths-based leadership and the substitutes for leadership theory by enhancing our understanding of the effect of job control. (shrink)

This article examines whether the charitable giving amount and likelihood of firm response to catastrophic events relate to firms’ ownership type using a unique dataset of listed firms in China, where state ownership is still prevalent. Based on the data of Chinese firms’ response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, we find that the extent of corporate contributions for state-owned firms following this disaster is less than that for private firms. State-owned firms are also less likely to respond in␣this disaster compared (...) to private firms. The results also␣reveal that firm size, profitability, geography, cash resource available, and leverage affect firms’ philanthropic disaster response behavior in China. (shrink)

Ratio, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 303-311, December 2021.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding about the mechanism that underlies the detrimental effects of workplace spirituality dimensions on employee unethical pro-organizational behavior, directly as well as indirectly, through job satisfaction. Using a sample consisting of 458 employees in various organizations in China, this study reveals that two dimensions of WPS are positively associated with UPB. Also the results of this paper show that each of the three dimensions of WPS has a significant positive relationship with job satisfaction. (...) Furthermore, this study successfully confirms the mediating effect of job satisfaction in the relationship between WPS dimensions and UPB. Finally, theoretical and practical implications, future research directions and limitations of this study are discussed at the end of this research article. (shrink)

Although the ethical aspects of transformational leadership have attracted considerable attention, very little is known about followers’ reactions to the moral and immoral conduct of transformational leaders. Against this background, this study examined whether and how transformational leadership interacts with moral and authoritarian leadership behaviors in predicting followers’ in-role and extra-role efforts. Building on attribution theory, we hypothesized that the positive and negative effects of these leadership behaviors would be particularly pronounced for highly transformational leaders given that this leadership style (...) elicits strong attention and sense-making efforts among followers. We tested our model in a sample of 228 individuals comprising 114 leader–follower dyads from a wide range of organizations and industries. In line with our hypotheses, results revealed that for highly transformational leaders, moral leadership behaviors related positively to employees’ in-role and extra-role efforts whereas authoritarian leadership behaviors related negatively to employees’ in-role and extra-role efforts. In contrast, moral and authoritarian leadership behaviors did not significantly affect followers’ reactions to leaders low in transformational leadership. Taken together, these findings suggest that transformational leadership, contrary to its largely positive perception in the literature, can be a rather mixed blessing. Implications for theory, future research, and managerial practice are discussed. (shrink)

This article describes a representation-based framework of distributed cognition. This framework considers distributed cognition as a cognitive system whose structures and processes are distributed between internal and external representations, across a group of individuals, and across space and time. The major issue for distributed research, under this framework, are the distribution, transformation, and propagation of information across the components of the distributed cognitive system and how they affect the performance of the system as a whole. To demonstrate the value of (...) this representation-based approach, the framework was used to describe and explain an important, challenging, and controversial issue — the concept of affordance. (shrink)

Truth-telling is often regarded as a challenge in Chinese medical practices given the amount of clinical and ethical controversies it may raise. This study sets to collect and synthesize relevant ethical evidence of the current situation in mainland China, thereby providing corresponding guidance for medical practices. This study looks into the ethical issues on the basis of the philosophy of deontology and utilitarianism and the ethical principles of veracity, autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence. Chinese philosophy, context and culture are also discussed (...) to provide some suggestions for decision-making about disclosure in a medical setting. This study holds that, in order to respect the basic rights to which critically ill patients are entitled, decisions regarding truth-telling and their implementation should be carried out with thorough consideration, which can be achieved by critical thinking, well-developed and effective communication skills, the consideration of cultural context, an understanding of individual differences, and compliance with relevant laws and regulations. (shrink)

This research examines how and why reactions to other consumers’ unethical behavior differ among consumers and vary in different situations. Drawing on construal level theory, the authors propose that the relationship between other consumers’ unethical behavior and focal consumers’ unethical behavior is moderated by focal consumers’ construal level, and self-expressiveness mediates this moderating effect. Specifically, consumers at higher construal levels tend to view their behavior as more self-expressive and are thus less likely to imitate other consumers’ unethical behavior. Study 1 (...) indicates that focal consumers who have a chronic tendency to construe information at high levels are less likely to replicate other consumers’ unethical behavior than those who have a chronic tendency to construe information at low levels. Studies 2, 3a and 3b show that when primed with higher-level construals, consumers are less likely to follow other consumers’ unethical behavior than when primed with lower-level construals. The mediating effect of self-expressiveness was tested and supported in Study 1 and Study 3b. These findings help to better understand consumers’ reactions to other consumers’ unethical behavior. (shrink)

Drawing on the work–family enrichment theory, the present study investigates the cross-domain effects of ethical leadership on employees’ family and life satisfaction. Moreover, it focuses on the mediating role of work–family enrichment and the moderated mediation process of family-supportive supervisor behaviors underlying the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ family and life satisfaction. Using a sample of 371 employees and their immediate supervisors in China, we found that WFE mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and employee-rated and supervisor-rated family and (...) life satisfaction. Moreover, FSSB positively moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and WFE, such that the relationship was strengthened when FSSB were higher. Furthermore, the mediations of WFE between ethical leadership and employee-rated and supervisor-rated family and life satisfaction were also positively moderated by FSSB, such that the indirect effects were stronger when FSSB were higher. The theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are further discussed. (shrink)

In the causal inference framework of Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines, inferences about causal relationships are made from samples from probability distributions and a number of assumptions relating causal relations to probability distributions. The most controversial of these assumptions is the Causal Faithfulness Assumption, which roughly states that if a conditional independence statement is true of a probability distribution generated by a causal structure, it is entailed by the causal structure and not just for particular parameter values. In this paper we (...) show that the addition of the Causal Faithfulness Assumption plays three quite different roles in the SGS framework: it reduces the degree of underdetermination of causal structure by probability distribution; computationally, it justifies reliable causal inference algorithms that would otherwise have to be slower in order to be reliable; and statistically, it implies that those algorithms reliably obtain the correct answer at smaller sample sizes than would otherwise be the case. We also consider a number of variations on the Causal Faithfulness Assumption, and show how they affect each of these three roles. (shrink)

In place of the traditional epistemological view of knowledge as justified true belief we argue that artificial intelligence and law needs an evidence-based epistemology according to which scientific knowledge is based on critical analysis of evidence using argumentation. This new epistemology of scientific evidence (ESE) models scientific knowledge as achieved through a process of marshaling evidence in a scientific inquiry that results in a convergence of scientific theories and research results. We show how a dialogue interface of argument from expert (...) opinion, along with its set of critical questions, provides the argumentation component of the ESE. It enables internal scientific knowledge to be translated over into a wider arena in which individual nonexpert citizens and groups can make use of it. The external component shows how evidence is presented and used in a legal procedural setting that includes fact-finding, weighing the credibility of expert witnesses, and critical questioning of arguments. The paper critically reviews the standards of admissibility of scientific evidence using the ESE. (shrink)

Using a manually collected dataset on the overseas experiences of directors of Chinese listed firms, we examine the effects of returnee directors on firms’ corporate social responsibility engagement. Our results show that returnee directors significantly improve their firms’ CSR engagement. The positive relationship between the percentage of returnee directors and CSR engagement is more significant when a firm is in a competitive industry, when a firm has no government ownership, when a firm’s CEO is not politically connected, and when a (...) firm’s CEO is older. Furthermore, we find that only long-term foreign professional or academic experience matters, whereas short-term visiting experience does not. Finally, our results are robust after controlling for endogeneity. Therefore, this paper offers clear policy implications by suggesting that hiring more returnees as corporate directors is an efficient way to enhance firms’ CSR, which may be of particular interest to regulators in emerging markets. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Leaders have been thought to play a vital role in influencing employees’ unethical behavior. However, what happens to leaders and followers in the aftermath of unethical conduct has received little attention in the literature. Drawing from the correspondent inference theory, we examine the conditions under which leaders attribute their followers’ unethical behavior to poor moral character and eventually assign them low performance ratings. Through a two-wave research design and data from 290 matched employee–leader dyads, we found that a leader (...) is more likely to infer that a follower who has engaged in unethical behavior is of poor moral character when the leader has a higher moral identity, and the leader will impose lower performance ratings on this follower when the leader prefers lower moral decoupling. (shrink)

BackgroundChildhood experiences can exert a huge impact on adult psychological conditions. Previous studies have confirmed the effects of adverse childhood experiences and benevolent childhood experiences on psychological distress separately, but few studies explored a combined effect of ACEs and BCEs on psychological distress. The aim of this study was to explore a combined effect of ACEs and BCEs on psychological distress among Chinese undergraduates.MethodsParticipants were undergraduates aged 17–24 years and completed a self-reported questionnaire. A series of regression analyses were conducted (...) to examine the association between childhood experiences and psychological distress.ResultsA total of 65.7% of undergraduates had BCEs, 27.1% of undergraduates had ACEs, and 12.9% of undergraduates had ACEs and BCEs simultaneously. Logistic regression analysis indicated that undergraduates who experienced high ACEs were more likely to have a high risk of psychological distress [odds ratio = 1.46, 1.84, and 3.15 for uncertainty stress, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation, respectively], while undergraduates who experienced High BCEs were less likely to have psychological distress compared with Low-Both group. The combined effect of ACEs and BCEs could also play as a protective factor in uncertainty stress and depressive symptoms.ConclusionOur findings suggested that ACEs and BCEs could not only predict the psychological distress independently, but also BCEs could counteract the negative effect of ACEs in psychological problems. There is an even greater need to identify and support the victims of ACEs and to increase BCEs in early childhood. (shrink)

DNA replication stress threatens ordinary DNA synthesis. The evolutionarily conserved DNA replication stress response pathway involves sensor kinase Mec1/ATR, adaptor protein Mrc1/Claspin, and effector kinase Rad53/Chk1, which spurs a host of changes to stabilize replication forks and maintain genome integrity. DNA replication forks consist of largely distinct sets of proteins at leading and lagging strands that function autonomously in DNA synthesis in vitro. In this article, we discuss eSPAN and BrdU‐IP‐ssSeq, strand‐specific sequencing technologies that permit analysis of protein localization and (...) DNA synthesis at individual strands in budding yeast. Using these approaches, we show that under replication stress Rad53 stalls DNA synthesis on both leading and lagging strands. On lagging strands, it stimulates PCNA unloading, and on leading strands, it attenuates the replication function of Mrc1‐Tof1. We propose that in doing so, Rad53 couples leading and lagging strand DNA synthesis during replication stress, thereby preventing the emergence of harmful ssDNA. (shrink)

Some recent authors suggest that the extended view fails because it does not follow from functionalism. For although functionalism can tell us whether a system is cognitive, it does not show whether such a newly identified cognitive system can be attributed to the very same subject. I argue that Clark and Chalmers can dodge this attack by claiming that the Parity Principle is essentially an analogy. In their crucial thought experiment, it can be argued that Otto’s notebook is similar to (...) Inga’s biological memory in that they are functionally equivalent, and it seems that the only relevant difference between them is concerned with their being located inside/outside the skull/skin. Provided that Inga’s biological memory is part of Inga’s cognition, analogously, Otto’s notebook should also be regarded as part of Otto’s cognition. However, I argue that this alleged analogy does not hold because the location is not the only difference that matters. Otto’s notebook and Inga’s biological memory are taken as part of a whole for different reasons, and because of this, they actually belong to different kinds of wholes. Otto’s notebook is part of a whole because such a whole functions as a cognitive system, but Inga’s biological memory is part of a whole because it is within a “proper whole” whose boundary is determined by reproduction. As a result, the analogy does not really work. (shrink)

This study investigates the impact of job satisfaction and personal values on the work orientation of accounting practitioners in China. Satisfaction with work varies across individuals and how individuals view work (i.e., work orientation) may depend not only on satisfaction with various facets of their work but also on their beliefs and values. We used the questionnaire from Wrzesniewski et al. (J Res Pers 31, 21–33, 1997) to measure work orientation. Job satisfaction was measured by the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) (...) developed by Smith et al. (The Measurement of Satisfaction in Work and Retirement. Rand McNally, Skokie, IL, 1969) and personal values were measured by the Schwartz Value Questionnaire Survey (Schwartz, Adv Exp Social Psychol 25, 1–65, 1992). Our sample consisted of 370 accounting practitioners from six major cities in China; 268 were females and 102 were males. We found that 41.9 % of the respondents viewed their work as a career, 37.6 % as a calling and 20.5 % as a job and that job satisfaction to be the highest among the “calling” group and lowest among the “job” group. There were no significant gender differences in the work orientation of the respondents. Our study showed that the value types achievement and hedonism and satisfaction with promotion were significant predictors of the career orientation, while the value type benevolence and satisfaction with the present job were predictors of the calling orientation. Dissatisfaction with work was the major predictor of the job orientation. Furthermore, length of employment was positively associated with both the calling and job orientation, but negatively associated with the career orientation. (shrink)

Handling exceptions in a knowledge-based system is an important issue in many application domains, such as medical domain. Recently, there is an increasing interest in nonmonotonic extension of description logics to handle exceptions in ontologies. In this paper, we propose three preferential semantics for plausible subsumption to deal with exceptions in description logic-based knowledge bases. Our preferential semantics are defined in the framework of possibility theory, which is an uncertainty theory devoted to handling incomplete information. We consider the properties of (...) these semantics and their relationships. We also discuss the relationship between two of our preferential semantics and two existing preferential semantics. We extend a description logic-based knowledge base by adding preferential subsumptions. Entailment of plausible subsumptions relative to an extended knowledge base is defined. Properties of the preferential subsumption relations relative to an extended description logic-based knowledge base are discussed. Finally, we show that our semantics for plausible subsumption can be reduced to standard semantics of an expressive description logic. Thus, the problem of plausible subsumption checking under our semantics can be reduced to the problem of subsumption checking under the classical semantics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Daodejing is an ancient Chinese text traditionally taken as a representative Daoist classic expressing a distinctive philosophy from the Warring States Period . This essay explicates the ethical dimensions of the DDJ paying attention to issues related to war and peace. The discussion consists of four parts: “naturalness” as an onto‐cosmological argument for a philosophy of harmony, balance, and peace; war as a sign of the disruption of the natural pattern of things initiated by the proliferation of desire; defensive (...) war and appropriate war conduct required when one has to be involved in warfare; and the natural and spontaneous way of living that would prevent war from happening in the first place. This essay attempts to show that what makes the DDJ different from other military texts, or what is called the “art of war corpus” in China is that the discourse of war and warfare in the DDJ is presented via its unique understanding of peace at the personal and social levels. The DDJ is meant to be an inquiry into an effective method to prevent war from happening amid a world full of selfish interests and excessive desires. It proposes that peace is not only a condition in which there is freedom from war and overt violence, but a state of harmony that marks human life and its betterment. (shrink)

In China, state investment into public hospitals has radically decreased since the early 1980s and has brought on the dismantling of the healthcare system in most parts of the country, especially in rural areas. As a result of this overhaul, the majority of public hospitals have needed to compete in the so-called socialist market economy. The market economy stimulated public hospitals to modernize, take on highly qualified medical professionals, and dispense new therapies and drugs. At same time, liberalization has clearly (...) affected the attitude and behavior of both medical professionals and the general public. The public has many concerns about the healthcare system for various reasons: there are long hospital waiting lists, patients experience difficulties in obtaining an appointment to see a qualified doctor, and, over the past decades, there has been an increase in out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure. These and other changes in post-reform China have radically reshaped the doctor–patient interaction, which is increasingly eroded by tension and violence. (shrink)

Generic statements, such as "Bees are striped" are thought to be a central vehicle by which essentialist beliefs are transmitted. But work on generics and essentialism almost never focuses on the type of properties mentioned in generic statements. We test the hypothesis that teleological properties, what something is for, affect categorization judgments more strongly than behavioral, biological, or social properties. In Experiment 1, participants categorized properties as being either behavioral, biological, social, or teleological. In Experiment 2, we used the top (...) four properties from each group to describe a generic noun or a specific individual. Participants then categorized creatures that had one of their properties transformed. We found that changes to teleological properties had the strongest impact on categorization judgments. In Experiment 3, we also found that teleological properties mattered more in an induction task. We suggest that teleological properties play this privileged role in categorization because they are treated as essential properties. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown the operational potential in political discourse analysis from the proximization perspective. This study adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to analyze political communication across transcultural contexts, especially in the cyber discourse space. Based on the spatial–temporal–axiological model, we compare the journalistic discourses on two social media platforms by China Xinhua News Agency, an official speaker for China worldwide. The corpuses are constructed with microblogs on Weibo in Chinese and Twitter in English containing key words of Sino–US trade war. (...) It is found that the speaker has shaped different realities of discourse in accordance with the cultural contexts and proximized from corresponding dimensions to increase political legitimacy. (shrink)

Due to the historical background, political changes, external cultural impacts, and drastic internal changes in people's lifestyles, ethnic music is step by step on the decline or even on the verge of extinction. This paper analyses the significance, characteristics and dilemmas of the inheritance of folk music, and discusses the influence of social music education policy on the inheritance of folk music, and new ways of inheritance. It proposes two effective paths for the implementation of the social music education policy, (...) namely, the construction of high-quality music teachers and the development of school-based ethnic music programs, which will jointly promote the development of ethnic music in China. In the empirical study, a stratified sampling of schools was conducted in City G. Thirty-four schools were sampled. With a sample of students (1972), teachers (102), and music group leaders (34), the implementation of social music education policy in primary schools can significantly improve students' cognition, experience, understanding, love, inheritance, and development of ethnic music culture. (shrink)

Causal reasoning is primarily concerned with what would happen to a system under external interventions. In particular, we are often interested in predicting the probability distribution of some random variables that would result if some other variables were forced to take certain values. One prominent approach to tackling this problem is based on causal Bayesian networks, using directed acyclic graphs as causal diagrams to relate post-intervention probabilities to pre-intervention probabilities that are estimable from observational data. However, such causal diagrams are (...) seldom fully testable given observational data. In consequence, many causal discovery algorithms based on data-mining can only output an equivalence class of causal diagrams. This paper is concerned with causal reasoning given an equivalence class of causal diagrams, represented by a ancestral graph. We present two main results. The first result extends Pearl 's celebrated do-calculus to the context of ancestral graphs. In the second result, we focus on a key component of Pearl's calculus---the property of invariance under interventions, and give stronger graphical conditions for this property than those implied by the first result. The second result also improves the earlier, similar results due to Spirtes et al. (shrink)

We show that there is a $$ \varvec{\Sigma }_4^0$$ ideal such that it’s neither extendable to any $$ \varvec{\Pi }_3^0$$ ideal nor above the ideal $$\textrm{Fin}\times \textrm{Fin}$$ in the sense of Katětov order, answering a question from M. Hrušák.

Les questions les plus fondamentales de la phénoménologie du sentir de Max Scheler concernent la place de l’intentionnalité dans la phénoménologie du sentir et la structuration de la sphère émotionnelle. Dans la première section, nous nous focaliserons avant tout sur la différence entre les sentiments non intentionnels et le sentir intentionnel, en comparant sur ce point les positions de Scheler et de Husserl. En effet, Scheler critique ces deux thèses fondamentales de Husserl: 1) les actes affectifs et leurs corrélats (« (...) valeurs ») doivent être associés aux représentations et à leurs corrélats (« choses », Sachen ); 2) les actes affectifs, en tant qu’actes non objectivants, sont fondés dans les actes objectivants. D’une part, pour Scheler, la valeur est un objet unique en son genre du sentir des valeurs, et le sentir intentionnel est donc un acte indépendant. D’autre part, Scheler a d’abord entrepris de dépasser la séparation entre acte objectivant et acte non objectivant. Dans ce contexte, la recherche actuelle consacrée à Scheler se heurte à de nombreuses difficultés relatives à la structuration de la sphère émotionnelle en rapport avec la hiérarchie des modalités axiologiques et avec l’a priori corrélationnel. Dans la deuxième section, nous expliquerons d’abord les idées de Scheler, puis en discuterons les difficultés. C’est par le « commerce vivant » avec le monde dans le sentir intentionnel et dans les actes émotionnels intentionnels, par les corrélats intentionnels (valeurs matérielles), que Scheler se sépare du formalisme en éthique. A travers un « apriorisme matériel » qui présente trois espèce d’a priori (a priori axiologique, a priori émotionnel et a priori corrélationnel), l’éthique matérielle phénoménologique des valeurs de Sche­ler est guidée par l’esprit d’un « objectivisme et absolutisme éthique rigoureux ». (shrink)

Jiren (畸人), literally translated as irregular (Ji) person (ren), is a critical concept in the classical Daoist text the Zhuangzi (5th–3rd century BC.).1 The concept refers to individuals with atypical body shapes. Some of them lack body parts of the standard human body, like a leg or toes. Some others have an atypical anatomy, like having a chin stuck down their navel; and some of them are, by social standards of the time, considered to be extremely ugly.1 These individuals are (...) described as incredibly virtuous. The description of Jiren individuals as virtuous does not simply aim to show there may be hidden virtues that social conventions blur. The point is not to show that we should also care for those with atypical bodies who have a hidden virtue. Rather, the point is to show that all human beings have an unconditional intrinsic value and moral worth. So, Jiren prescribes that an atypical body shape does not reflect inferiority. The variation of body anatomies should be understood as how the world is, not a value hierarchy. The concept of Jiren encourages, therefore, to consider one’s own and others’ value beyond their physical appearance. What’s more, Jiren encourages individuals to resist social pressures to fit a standard and to search inward for who they really are and accept it. This ethical groundwork set by the Jiren aims at freeing people from existing physical and mental boundaries to their well-being and helping them rethink …. (shrink)

Up till now, China has not enacted any legal mechanisms governing certification or supervision for ethics committees. This article analyses deficiencies in the protection of subjects in clinical drug trials under China’s current laws and regulations; it emphasizes that investigators, as practitioners who have direct contact with subjects, play significant roles in protecting and safeguarding subjects’ rights and interests. The paper compares the status quo in China in this area to that of other countries and discusses ways China might enhance (...) the protection of rights and interests of trial subjects, such as enhancing the ethical awareness of investigators through training, improving laws and regulations, and strengthening the communication between investigators and ethics committees. (shrink)