Good knowledge management is important for enterprises to maintain competitive advantage; however, the knowledge hiding behavior may hinder this process. Based on the conservation of resources and psychological ownership theories, using a chain intermediary model, this study investigates the effect of justice sensitivity on knowledge hiding through perceived time pressure and territoriality, and further tests the moderating role of territoriality. For the study, we collected 436 questionnaires from China through the Wenjuanxing Sample Service, of which 391 were valid. We then (...) conducted multiple regression analysis and employed the bootstrap method for our tests. The results show that victim sensitivity has a significant effect on perceived time pressure, territoriality, and knowledge hiding, and that a chain mediating effect of perceived time pressure and territoriality is established between justice sensitivity and knowledge hiding. Further, territoriality has a positive moderating effect on perceived time pressure and knowledge hiding, while the mediating effect of perceived time pressure on justice sensitivity and knowledge hiding is also moderated by territoriality. Further, the study offers important practical implications in that enterprises should not blindly pursue results by making employees work excessively overtime. And there should have rationalized regulations in organization to ensure justice. The management should pay close attention to the psychological problems of victim and perpetrator. Instead, enterprises should have a certain degree of control, offer rationales for overtime work, and give high wages to the employees to compensate for their time, thus making the employees feel the worthiness of their overtime work and reducing the probability of engaging in knowledge hiding behaviors. (shrink)

本文集收入了当代西方科学哲学的逻辑进程、意识经验的感受性和涌现、现象学与逻辑学、西方形而上学的实存哲学路线等共26篇文章。.

Background: Ethical issues pose challenges for nurses who are increasingly caring for patients in complicated situations. Ethical sensitivity is a prerequisite for nurses to make decisions in the best interest of their patients in daily practice. Currently, there is no tool for assessing ethical sensitivity in Chinese language, and no empirical studies of ethical sensitivity among Chinese nurses. Research objectives: The study was conducted to translate the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–Revised Version (MSQ-R) into Chinese and establish the psychometric properties of the (...) Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–Revised Version into Chinese (MSQ-R-CV). Research design: This research was a methodological and descriptive study. Participants and research context: MSQ-R was translated into Chinese using Brislin’s model, and the Translation Validity Index was evaluated. MSQ-R-CV was then distributed along with a demographic questionnaire to 360 nurses working at tertiary and municipal hospitals in Changsha, China. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of Yale University and Central South University. Findings: MSQ-R-CV achieved Cronbach’s alpha 0.82, Spearman-Brown coefficient 0.75, significant item discrimination (p < 0.001), and item-total correlation values ranging from 0.524 to 0.717. A two-factor structure was illustrated by exploratory factor analysis, and further confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Chinese nurses had a mean total score of 40.22 ± 7.08 on the MSQ-R-CV, and sub-scores of 23.85 ± 4.4 for moral responsibility and strength and 16.37 ± 3.75 for sense of moral burden. Discussion: The findings of this study were compared with studies from other countries to examine the structure and meaningful implications of ethical sensitivity in Chinese nurses. Conclusion: The two-factor MSQ-R-CV (moral responsibility and strength, and sense of moral burden) is a linguistically and culturally appropriate instrument for assessing ethical sensitivity among Chinese nurses. (shrink)

BackgroundBreast cancer patients are at elevated risk of depression during treatment, thus provoking the chance of poor clinical outcomes. This retrospective cohort study aimed to investigate whether integrating Chinese herbal medicines citation into conventional cancer therapy could decrease the risk of depression in the long-term breast cancer survivors.MethodsA cohort of patients aged 20–70 years and with newly diagnosed breast cancer during 2000–2008 was identified from a nationwide claims database. In this study, we focused solely on survivors of breast cancer at (...) least1 year after diagnosis. After one-to-one matching for age, sex, and baseline comorbidities, breast cancer patients who received and did not receive CHM treatment were enrolled. The incidence rate and hazard ratio citation for depression between the two groups was estimated at the end of 2012. A Cox proportional hazard model was constructed to examine the impact of the CHM use on the risk of depression.ResultsDuring the study period, the incidence rate of depression was significantly lower in the treated cohort than in the untreated cohort [8.57 compared with 11.01 per 1,000 person-years citation], and the adjusted HR remained significant at 0.74 in a Cox proportional hazards regression model. The corresponding risk further decreasing to 43% among those using CHM for more than 1 year.ConclusionFinding from this investigation indicated that the lower risk of depression observed in breast cancer patients treated with CHM, suggesting that CHM treatment should be considered for disease management toward breast cancer. Yet, the optimal administered dose should be determined in further clinical trials. (shrink)

Riben Jiuzhou da xue tu shu guan cang you gu xie Huizhou ben "Zhuzi yu lei" yi bai si shi juan. Huizhou ben shang cheng "Chi lu", xia qi li bian, zai yu lu dao yu lei de xing cheng guo cheng zhong chu yu guan jian de di wei, dui xue jie yan jiu zhu xi si xiang de xing cheng guo cheng, Zhu Xi men ren de qing kuang, jin ben "Zhuzi yu lei" de xing cheng guo cheng (...) yi ji zhong gu shi qi gu Han yu bai hua, ti gong le xin de cai liao he xin de shi ye. (shrink)

To realize the coordinated and sustainable development of hydropower projects and regional society, comprehensively evaluating hydropower projects’ influence is critical. Usually, hydropower project development has an impact on environmental geology and social and regional cultural development. Based on comprehensive consideration of complicated geological conditions, fragile ecological environment, resettlement of reservoir area, and other factors of future hydropower development in each country, we have constructed a comprehensive evaluation index system of hydropower projects, including 4 first-level indicators of social economy, environment, safety, (...) and fairness, which contain 26 second-level indicators. To solve the problem that existing models cannot evaluate dynamic nonlinear optimization, a projection pursuit model is constructed by using rough set reduction theory to simplify the index. Then, an accelerated genetic algorithm based on real number coding is used to solve the model and empirical study is carried out with the Y hydropower station as a sample. The evaluation results show that the evaluation index system and assessment model constructed in our paper effectively reduce the subjectivity of index weight. Applying our model to the social impact assessment of related international hydropower projects can not only comprehensively analyze the social impact of hydropower projects but also identify important social influencing factors and effectively analyze the social impact level of each dimension. Furthermore, SIA assessment can be conducive to project decision-making, avoiding social risks and social stability. (shrink)

BackgroundPsychological resilience may reduce the impact of psychological distress to some extent. We aimed to investigate the mental health status of the public during the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 and explore the level and related factors of anxiety and depression.MethodsFrom February 8 to March 9, 2020, 3,180 public completed the Zung’s Self-Rating Anxiety Scale for anxiety, Zung’s Self-Rating Depression Scale for depression, the Connor–Davidson resilience scale for psychological resilience, and the Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire for the attitudes and coping (...) styles.ResultsThe number of people with depressive symptoms was 1,303. The number of people with anxiety symptoms was 1,184. The depressed group and anxiety group had less education, more unmarried and younger age, as well as had significant different in SDS total score, SAS total score, CD-RISC total score, and SCSQ score. The binary logistic regression showed that female, strength, and the subscales of active coping style in SCSQ remained protective factors and passive coping style and higher SAS score were risk factors for depression. Optimism in CD-RISC was a protective factor, and passive coping styles and higher SDS score were risk factors for anxiety.LimitationsThis study adopted a cross-sectional design and used self-report questionnaires.ConclusionThe mental health of the public, especially females, the younger and less educational populations, and unmarried individuals, should be given more attention. Individuals with high level of mental resilience and active coping styles would have lower levels of anxiety and depression during the outbreak of COVID-19. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphors crucially shape how people understand and represent abstract concepts like love. Numerous Chinese linguistic metaphors associate love (beginning/continuing a romantic relationship) with red (e.g. 红豆相思) and lovelorn (breakup/end of a romantic relationship) with gray (e.g. 万念俱灰). However, empirical evidence supporting these color metaphors for love concepts is lacking. This study investigated the red-gray color metaphor for love concepts in Chinese. Experiment 1 used a Stroop test where participants categorized love/lovelorn words in red/gray fonts. Results showed significantly faster latencies (...) for love words in red versus gray fonts, but no difference for lovelorn words. Experiment 2 used an implicit association test (IAT), where the compatible block paired red squares with love words and gray squares with lovelorn words, and vice versa in the incompatible block. Results showed that participants implicitly associated love words with red colors and lovelorn words with gray colors. Together, these experiments provide novel empirical evidence that native Chinese speakers activate metaphorical red-gray color mappings for love concepts, contributing insights into how abstract love concepts are grounded in embodied experiences. Future research could explore color-love metaphors across cultures, paradigms, and gender-balanced samples. (shrink)

Increasingly complex and volatile work environments challenge long-term employment and job security. Managers are not exempt from this, because they also often perceive their own jobs to be precarious. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, we offer a fresh perspective to understand how and when abusive supervision is induced by manager job insecurity on a daily basis. We draw upon manager need for power as a within-person novel explanatory mechanism to explain why job insecurity triggers managers to display abusive supervision (...) on a daily basis. To test our model, we conducted a study over a period of 10 consecutive days, using an experience sampling methodology, in which 126 managers in Chinese banks completed 1,058 daily surveys. In agreement with our hypotheses, we found that manager need for power, triggered by job insecurity, is a proximal cause of abusive supervision on a daily basis, after controlling for several other variables that have been found to lead to abusive supervision. The detrimental effects of daily manager job insecurity are alleviated when managers are equipped with higher levels of trait resilience and daily state mindfulness. Thus, our findings provide a more comprehensive picture of how managers’ stable and dynamic resources operate as beneficial buffers, alleviating the harm resulting from a daily workplace stressor—in this case, job insecurity. Overall, our study traces the fluctuation of a specific resource, and reveals the consequences of manager job insecurity from a leader-centric perspective. (shrink)

Project citizenship behavior has an important positive impact on project success. Researching how to promote PCB is an important issue in project management. Based on social learning theory and social cognitive theory, this paper adopted the method of questionnaire survey and hierarchical linear model to analyze the collected data derived from the sample of Chinese construction enterprises and verified this hypothesis. The results show that responsible leadership has a significant positive effect on PCB, moral identity mediates this relationship, and collective (...) moral sensitivity positively moderates this mediating effect. The findings of the study systematically and deeply reveal the intrinsic mechanism of the cross-level influence of responsible leadership on PCB, and provide new enlightenment for the practice of project management. (shrink)

For enhancing the stability of the microgrid operation, this paper proposes an optimization model considering the small-signal stability constraint. Due to the nonsmooth property of the spectral abscissa function, the droop controller parameters’ optimization is a nonsmooth optimization problem. The Sequential Quadratic Programming with Gradient Sampling is implemented to optimize the droop controller parameters for solving the nonsmooth problem. The SQP-GS method can guarantee the solution of the optimization problem globally and efficiently converges to stationary points with probability of one. (...) In the current iteration, the gradient of the nonsmooth function can be evaluated on a set of randomly generated nearby points by computing closed-form sensitivities. A test on the microgrid system shows that the optimality and the efficiency of the SQP-GS are better than those of the heuristic algorithms. (shrink)

Given the current shortage of kindergarten teachers, this study examines the relationship between empowering leadership and job satisfaction among kindergarten teachers in China from the perspective of their job characteristics and the Chinese cultural context. The participants were 557 Chinese kindergarten female teachers whose average number of years of experience was 2.82. They completed a self-report survey regarding empowering leadership, vigor, affective commitment, and job satisfaction. The study results show that vigor and affective commitment could mediate the relationship between empowering (...) leadership and job satisfaction. Finally, we discuss the findings of this study in depth. At the same time, we suggest that administrators should focus on the empowering leadership of Chinese kindergarten teachers, strive to increase their level of dynamism, and finally, strengthen the emotional connection between the organization and the Chinese kindergarten teachers. Thus, we suggest that educational administrators should empower kindergarten teachers more, rather than allowing them to be mere enforcers. In addition, how to enhance the individual dynamics of early childhood teachers and their emotional connection to the organization may also be something for educational administrators to consider. (shrink)

The present study examined the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation using Halo Sport on the time to exhaustion in relation with muscle activities and corticomuscular coupling of agonist and antagonist muscles during a sustained isometric fatiguing contraction performed with the elbow flexors. Twenty healthy male college students were randomly assigned to tDCS group and control group. The two group participants performed two experimental sessions which consisted of pre-fatigue isometric maximal voluntary contraction, sustained submaximal voluntary contractions performed to exhaustion, and (...) post-fatigue MVC with the right elbow flexor muscles. Sham stimulation and tDCS were applied for control and tDCS group participants 20 min prior to the second session test, respectively. MVC strength in pre- and post-fatigue test, TTE, electroencephalogram, and electromyography of biceps brachii and triceps brachii were recorded during the tests. It was found that tDCS using the Halo Sport device significantly increased TTE and thus improved muscular endurance performance. The improvement may be partly related to the improvement of neuromuscular efficiency as reflected by decrease of antagonistic muscle coactivation activities, which may be related to cortical originated central processing mechanism of neuromuscular activities. (shrink)

Classic genetics studies found that genomic imbalance caused by changing the dosage of part of the genome (aneuploidy) has more detrimental effects than altering the dosage of the whole genome (ploidy). Previous analysis revealed global modulation of gene expression triggered by aneuploidy across various species, including maize (Zea mays), Arabidopsis, yeast, mammals, etc. Plant microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of 20‐ to 24‐nt endogenous small noncoding RNAs that carry out post‐transcriptional gene expression regulation. That miRNAs and their putative targets are (...) preferentially retained as duplicates after whole‐genome duplication, as are many transcription factors and signaling components, indicates miRNAs are likely to be dosage‐sensitive and potentially involved in genomic balance networks. This review addresses the following questions regarding the role of miRNAs in genomic imbalance. (1) How do aneuploidy and polyploidy impact the expression of miRNAs? (2) Do miRNAs play a regulatory role in modulating the expression of their targets under genomic imbalance? (shrink)

ObjectiveTo investigate the instant impact of hemodialysis on the cerebral morphological measurements of patients with end-stage renal disease.Materials and methodsTwenty-five patients undergoing maintenance HD and twenty-eight age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy control were included. The HD group and HC group had 3D high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging scans twice and once, respectively. Both groups underwent neuropsychologic tests. The morphological measurements of structural MRI were measured using CAT12 and these measures were compared among three groups. The relationship between morphological measures and (...) clinical parameters and neuropsychological tests were investigated through multiple regression analysis.ResultsCompared to the HC group, the cortical thickness before HD significantly decreased in the bilateral temporal lobe and significantly decreased in the left superior temporal gyrus after HD. The cortical thickness significantly increased in the bilateral temporal lobe, frontal lobe and occipital lobe after HD compared to before HD. The sulcus depth in the bilateral insula, frontal lobe, and parietal lobe after HD significantly increased compared to before HD. No significant differences in sulcus depth between HD and HC were detected. After HD, the cortical thickness of the right parsopercularis was positively correlated with the number connection test-A. Cortical thickness in multiple regions were positively correlated with blood flow velocity and cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus was negatively correlated with ultrafiltration volume. Patients showed better performance in the digit symbol test and line tracing test after HD compared to before HD, but there were no significant differences in the comparison of neuropsychologic tests between patients and HC.ConclusionThe instant morphological changes were captured during a single hemodialysis in HD patients. There was an association between these instant changes in the brain and clinical parameters and neuropsychologic tests. This work implied the instant impact of a single hemodialysis impact on the brain in HD patients. (shrink)

Background: Contact heat evoked potentials is used to diagnose small fiber neuropathy. We established the normal values of CHEPs parameters in Chinese adults, optimized the test technique, and determined its reproducibility.Methods: We recruited 151 healthy adults. CHEPs was performed on the right forearm to determine the optimal number of stimuli, and then conducted at different sites to establish normal values, determine the effects of demographic characteristics and baseline temperature, and assess the short- and long-term reproducibility. N2 latency/height varied with age (...) and sex, while P2 latency/height and N2–P2 amplitude varied with age. The optimal number of stimuli was three.Results: N2 latency/height and P2 latency/height decreased and N2–P2 amplitude and visual analog scale score increased with increased baseline temperature. CHEPs parameters did not differ with time.Conclusion: We established normal CHEPs values in Chinese adults. We found that CHEPs parameters changed with baseline temperature and that the short- and long-term test reproducibility were satisfactory. (shrink)

Recognition of the identity of familiar faces in conditions with poor visibility or over large changes in head angle, lighting and partial occlusion is far more accurate than recognition of unfamiliar faces in similar conditions. Here we used a visual search paradigm to test if one class of social cues transmitted by faces – direction of another’s attention as conveyed by gaze direction and head orientation – is perceived more rapidly in personally familiar faces than in unfamiliar faces. We found (...) a strong effect of familiarity on the detection of these social cues, suggesting that the times to process these signals in familiar faces are markedly faster than the corresponding processing times for unfamiliar faces. In the light of these new data, hypotheses on the organization of the visual system for processing faces are formulated and discussed. (shrink)

Students often face difficulties and experience negative emotions toward second language learning. The affective tutoring system is a next-generation learning approach that can detect the affective status of learning to increase performance. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, an innovative affective mobile language tutoring system was designed to support Japanese language learning. The effects of AMLTS, along with asynchronous discussion, that were intended to improve performance, were examined using a triangulation method. To investigate the effect on emotion, the proposed (...) AMLTS provides a virtual emotion agent that can interact with users and record emotional events, learning assessments, and the results of the interaction into a database. Learning effectiveness evaluations were conducted via two experiments: prototype evaluation and final evaluation. Sixty-three students, all beginners, were invited to use the AMLTS to learn Japanese. The research results show that the proposed AMLTS affective interaction design significantly improves learner engagement and performance. In the emotion feedback analysis and learning process, AMLTS helped students deepen their understanding of the content, enabled them to clearly understand the content, and to engage in peer interaction and experience positive emotions. In the evaluation of system usability, AMLTS reveals good usability for foreign language acquisition. (shrink)

While unethical behaviors that are intended to benefit the self are often severely punished, unethical behaviors that are intended to benefit the organization (unethical pro-organizational behaviors, UPBs) are disciplined within organizations at different levels of severity. Building on the sensemaking theoretical framework, we study how employees make sense of what the organization is like through observing what the organization has done (i.e., different levels of punishment imposed for UPBs) and how employees subsequently react to the results of sensemaking (i.e., affective (...) commitment to the organization)—increased or decreased turnover and UPB engagement intention. By conducting a vignette-based experimental study and a time-lagged field study, we find that affective commitment to the organization of observers, especially those with a high moral disengagement propensity, increases at a low-to-moderate level of punishment severity for UPBs, and decreases at a moderate-to-high level of punishment severity for UPBs. Furthermore, the impacted affective commitment to the organization subsequently leads to increase in observers’ UPB engagement (intention) and decrease in observers’ turnover intention. We also highlight implications for theory and practice. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the effects of parental phubbing on learning burnout in elementary and secondary school students and its mechanism of action. A questionnaire method was applied to investigate parental phubbing, parent–child attachment, ego depletion, and learning burnout among 2090 elementary and secondary school students in Anhui Province, China. The results are as follows: Parental phubbing was significantly correlated with parent–child attachment, ego depletion, and learning burnout; Parental phubbing has an indirect impact on learning burnout in elementary and (...) secondary school students through three pathways: a separate mediating effect on parent–child attachment, a separate mediating effect on ego depletion, and a chain mediating effect on both. Parental phubbing is a risk factor for Learning Burnout, which can positively affect Learning Burnout in elementary and secondary school students. The findings of the study contribute to revealing the influence mechanism of parental phubbing on learning burnout in elementary and secondary school students. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 2, Page 577-588, April 2022.

To study the different mechanisms of understanding figurative language in a speaker’s native language and their second language, this study investigated how scientific metaphors in Chinese and English are electrophysiologically processed via event-related potential experimentation. Compared with the metaphors from daily life or in literary works, scientific metaphors tend to involve both a more complicated context structure and a distinct knowledge-inferencing process. During the N400 time window, English scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400s than Chinese ones at the parietal region. (...) In the late positive component time window, English scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPCs than Chinese ones at the parietal region, and larger late negativities encompassing smaller areas of the brain. The findings might indicate that for late unbalanced bilingual speakers, L2 scientific metaphor comprehension requires more effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route. Altogether, the possible findings are that non-native and non-dominant language processing involves decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms, and decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings. (shrink)

BackgroundMental stress and imbalance of its two neural stress systems, the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, are associated with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome and erectile dysfunction. However, the comprehensive analyses of psychological stress and stress systems are under-investigated, particularly in CP/CPPS patients complicated by lower urinary tract symptoms and ED.Materials and methodsParticipants were 95 patients in CP/CPPS+ED group, 290 patients in CP/CPPS group, 124 patients in ED group and 52 healthy men in control group. The National Institutes (...) of Health Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index, the International Index of Erectile Function-5 and the International Prostate Symptom Score were used for assessing the disease severity of CP/CPPS, LUTS and ED. Psychometric self-report questionnaires including the Beck Anxiety Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, Type A Personality Test and Symptom Checklist 90 were completed for distress from physical symptoms. Twenty-five subjects per group were randomly selected for further investigating the changes of the HPA axis and ANS. Saliva samples were taken on 3 consecutive days at 8 specific times with strict reference to time of morning awakening for evaluation of free cortisol. Heart rate variability as marker of the ANS was measured using 24 h electrocardiography, and time-and frequency-domain variables were analyzed.ResultsThe BAI and SCL-90 scores were significantly higher in the CP/CPPS+ED, CP/CPPS and ED groups compared with the control group. The PSS scores of both groups with ED were significantly higher than the control group. Compared with the CP/CPPS group, the differences of PSS, SCL-90 and TAPT scores were statistically significant in CP/CPPS+ED patients. The IPSS scores were shown to have significantly positive correlations with BAI, PSS and SCL-90 in the CP/CPPS patients. However, in all subjects, the IIEF-5 scores were shown to have significantly negative correlations with BAI, PSS, SCL-90 and quality of life score in NIH-CPSI. Cortisol awakening response parameters and diurnal cortisol levels did not significantly vary between the four groups. Time-dependent parameters of HRV also did not differ significantly across groups. In the frequency domain analysis, low frequency was significantly lower in ED patients when compared with CP/CPPS+ED patients and healthy controls, high frequency power was significantly higher in healthy controls compared to patients with ED, CP/CPPS and CP/CPPS+ED, and the CP/CPPS+ED group had significantly higher LF/HF ratio than the control group.ConclusionCP/CPPS and ED patients score exceedingly high on most psychosocial variables. The symptom scores of LUTS and ED positively correlate with the severity of psychological stress. Our findings also suggest that the ANS sympathovagal imbalance is associated with ED and LUTS in CP/CPPS, whereas HPA axis activity is not. (shrink)

Empathy and altruistic behavior are more crucial abilities for pre-service teachers to possess when compared with other study fields. The relationship between empathy and altruistic behavior in Chinese pre-service teachers and their underlying mechanisms, however, has received relatively little attention in the literature. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to examine the links between study fields, self-control, emotional empathy, and altruistic preferences among undergraduates and graduates in five Chinese universities with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C Questionnaire, the Self-Control Scale, (...) and the Chinese Self-Report Altruism Scale tests. The results showed a significant difference between pre-service and non-pre-service teachers in empathic concern and self-control. Furthermore, empathic concern and altruistic behavior tendency of pre-service teachers were significantly higher than those of non-pre-service teachers. Moreover, mediation analyses indicated that empathic concern partially mediated the relationship between study fields and altruistic tendency. Moderated mediation analysis further revealed that self-control buffered the relation between empathic concern and altruistic behavior tendency. These results demonstrate that altruistic tendency of pre-service teachers is influenced by empathic concern and self-control. (shrink)

Biomedical moral enhancement, or BME for short, aims to improve people’s moral behaviors through augmenting, via biomedical means, their virtuous dispositions such as sympathy, honesty, courage, or generosity. Recently, it has been challenged, on particularist grounds, however, that the manifestations of the virtuous dispositions can be morally wrong. For instance, being generous in terrorist financing is one such case. If so, biomedical moral enhancement, by enhancing people’s virtues, might turn out to be counterproductive in terms of people’s moral behaviors. In (...) this paper, we argue, via a comparison with moral education, that the case for the practice of biomedical moral enhancement is not weakened by the particularists’ stress on the variable moral statuses of the manifestations of our virtues. The real challenge from the particularists, we argue, lies elsewhere. It is that practical wisdom, being essentially context-sensitive, cannot be enhanced via biomedical means. On the basis of this, we further argue that BME ought to be used with great caution, for it may wrongly enhance, for instance, a terrorist financier’s generosity, a robber’s courage, or an undercover detective’s honesty. Finally, we sketch how boundaries can be set on the use of BME, and address some potential objections to our position. (shrink)

John Harris recently argues that the moral bioenhancement proposed by Persson and Savulescu can damage moral agency by depriving the recipients of their freedom to fall (freedom to make wrongful choices) and therefore should not be pursued. The link Harris makes between moral agency and the freedom to fall, however, implies that all forms of moral enhancement, including moral education, that aim to make the enhancement recipients less likely to “fall” are detrimental to moral agency. In this paper, I present (...) a new moral agency-based critique against the moral bioenhancement program envisaged by Persson and Savulescu. I argue that the irresistible influences exerted by the bioenhancement program harms our capabilities for conducting accurate self-reflection and forming decisions that truly express our will, which subsequently undermine our moral agency. (shrink)

In various guises (usually referred to as the “basic emotion” or “discrete emotion” approach), scientists and philosophers have long argued that certain categories of emotion are natural kinds. In a recent paper, Colombetti (2009) proposed yet another natural kind account, and in so doing, characterized and critiqued psychological constructionist approaches to emotion, including our own Conceptual Act Model. In this commentary, we briefly address three topics raised by Columbetti. First, we correct several common misperceptions about the discrete emotion approach to (...) emotion. Second, we discuss misconceptions of our Conceptual Act Model. Finally, we briefly comment on Columbetti's Dynamical Discrete Emotion model. (shrink)

Background: An overview of ethical sensitivity among Chinese registered nurses is needed to develop and optimize the education programs and interventions to cultivate and improve ethical sensitivity. Aim: The study was conducted to explore the barriers to and facilitators of ethical sensitivity among Chinese registered nurses working in hospital settings. Research design: A convergent parallel mixed-methods research design was adopted. Participants and research context: In the cross-sectional quantitative study, the Chinese Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–revised version was used to assess the levels (...) of ethical sensitivity among registered nurses, and the scores were correlated with key demographics, training experiences in ethics, and workplace cultural environments ( n = 306). In the qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were used to elicit the nurses’ perceptions of the barriers and facilitators in nurturing ethical sensitivity ( n = 15). The data were collected from February to June 2014. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of Yale University and Central South University. Results: Despite moderately high overall Chinese Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–revised version scores, the ethical sensitivity among Chinese nurses lags in practice. Barriers to ethical sensitivity include the lack of knowledge related to ethics, lack of working experience as a nurse, the hierarchical organizational climate, and the conformist working attitude. The positive workplace cultural environments and application of ethical knowledge in practice were considered potential facilitators of ethical sensitivity. Discussion: The findings of this study were compared with studies from other countries to examine the barriers and facilitators of ethical sensitivity in Chinese nurses. Conclusion: This mixed-methods study showed that even though the Chinese nurses have moderately high sensitivity to the ethical issues encountered in hospitals, there is still room for improvement. The barriers to and facilitators of ethical sensitivity identified here offer new and important strategies to support and enhance the nurses’ sensitivity to ethical issues. (shrink)

This study investigated students? perceptions of their own and their peers? academic dishonesty (AD), their reasons for this dishonesty, their achievement goals, and their willingness to report AD (WRAD) within a Chinese cultural context. The results identified students? belief that their peers had a greater likelihood of engaging in AD and had more motivation to do so than did the students themselves. Gender and academic major did not affect students? WRAD. However, students were significantly more willing to report classmates than (...) friends. In terms of the participants? self-perceptions and peer perceptions concerning motivations for AD, more female students cited the lack of penalties as the reason for their own and their peers? AD, whereas male students more frequently cited their lack of attention to schoolwork as the reason for their own AD. In contrast to students in the social sciences, business students more frequently cited inadequate capabilities as the reason for their AD, and engineering students more frequently attributed their AD to self-interest. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that three motivations for AD (opportunism, inadequacy, and self-promotion) could positively predict AD, whereas mastery-approach goals could negatively predict AD. (shrink)

This article investigates stakeholder expectations associated with corporate environmental disclosure. Several articles have studied the effect that stakeholder pressure has on environmental disclosing strategies. In this article, we extend previous research to an examination of the influence of external, internal, and intermediary stakeholder groups or constituencies in turn to clarify the demands of multiple stakeholders as to firms' disclosure of sufficient and adequate environmental information. The sample comprised Taiwanese firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Our results show that the (...) level of environmental disclosure is significantly affected by stakeholder groups' demands. External stake-holder groups, such as the government, debtors, and consumers, exert a strong influence over management intentions regarding the extent of environmental disclosure. Internal stakeholder groups, such as shareholders and employees, impose additional pressures on firms to disclose environmental information. As for intermediate stakeholder groups, environmental protection organizations, and accounting firms, these can greatly influence managerial choices regarding their environmental disclosure strategies. (shrink)

The cement industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries and among the largest CO2 emitters. Cement industry emissions in China have attracted particular attention, due to the country’s rapid growth. Yet few local Chinese cement companies have corporate social responsibility programs, and even fewer have environmentally related CSR programs. This paper studies the environmentally related CSR practices in mainland China of two companies: Lafarge, a multinational cement company, and Shui On, a Hong Kong-based construction company and developer. We are (...) interested in examining if there are differences in their environmentally related CSR practices, especially those related to emissions, in industrialized countries and Hong Kong on the one hand andin mainland China on the other—given that environmental regulations on the mainland are lax and an awareness of global climate change is largely nonexistent. Our intention is to investigate the influence of the CSR practices of multinational enterprises on the local Chinese cement industry, because they could be regarded as an effective vehicle to improve CSR awareness and practice in the Chinese cement industry and to help alleviate the industry’s impact on global climate change. We found that beneficial knowledge transfer from MNEs to local companies has not gone beyond improving production technology and management methods to the point of influencing CO2 emissions. Lafarge China and Shui On Cement announced a joint venture partnership during the course of our case study, and we examine whether this venture may have an impact on emission-related CSR practices in the Chinese cement industry. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine preservice Chinese language teachers’ cognition in teaching intercultural communicative competence. In the study we collected data through in-depth interviews with seven preservice teachers in a Master of Education program at a university in Hong Kong SAR, China. The findings indicated that the participants had a relatively positive attitude and inclination toward the development of students’ intercultural communicative competence, while their conceptualizations of culture tended to be static and ambiguous. In addition, the participants’ (...) objectives in teaching intercultural communicative competence were found to be more attitude-than knowledge- or skill-oriented. The study offers valuable insights that preservice language teachers’ cognition plays a crucial role in their future professional development and calls for curricular innovations with intercultural aims in teacher education programs. (shrink)

Due to the crucial role of customers’ brand citizenship behaviors on brand strength, this study explored the relationship between brand uniqueness, brand credibility, brand intimacy, brand love, and brand citizenship behavior in Taiwan’s restaurant context. The participants are the customers of Wang Steak, a famous restaurant chain in Taiwan. A total of 358 valid responses were gathered from a questionnaire survey, with a response rate of 71.6%. We used structural equation modeling to analyze the data. Brand uniqueness, brand credibility, and (...) brand intimacy all have a positive relationship with brand love. Moreover, brand love was positively associated with brand citizenship behavior. The findings provide greater insights into the relationship of perceived brand uniqueness, brand credibility, brand intimacy, and brand love with customers’ brand citizenship behaviors. (shrink)