Firms are central to wealth creation and distribution, but their role in economic inequality in a society remains poorly studied. In this essay, we define and distinguish value distribution from value creation and value appropriation. We identify four value distribution mechanisms that firms engage in and argue that shareholder wealth maximization approach skews the value distribution toward shareholders and top executives, which in turn contributes to rising economic inequalities around the world. We call on organizational scholars to study the value (...) distribution role of firms and its consequences for society, and introduce the articles in this volume of the special issue on economic inequality, business, and society. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of chief executive officer ability on firms’ corporate social responsibility performance. We find that firms’ CSR performance increases with CEO ability. Specifically, firms with more able CEOs are associated with more socially responsible activities and fewer socially irresponsible activities, and are associated with more stakeholder CSR rather than third-party CSR. We further find that the positive relation between CEO ability and CSR is weakened for CEO who is also the chair of the board and for (...) CEO who is close to retirement; and is weakened when the CSR emphasis exerted by a firm’s external environment is high. Our results are robust after controlling for firm fixed effects and to the use of multiple measures of CSR performance and CEO ability. Overall, our evidence is consistent with our conjecture that more able CEOs have less career concerns so that these CEOs are more willing to undertake long-term investments in socially beneficial activities, leading to better CSR performance. (shrink)

This study examines the relation between a firm’s business strategy and its corporate social responsibility performance. Using a comprehensive measure of business strategy based on the Miles and Snow theoretical framework, we find that firms following an innovation-oriented strategy are associated with better CSR performance than those following an efficiency-oriented strategy. Specifically, compared with defenders, prospectors engage in more socially responsible activities, fewer socially irresponsible activities, and perform better in both stakeholder- and third-party-related CSR areas. Taken together, our results suggest (...) that business strategy is an important determinant of CSR performance. Prospectors take advantage of CSR, as their innovation-oriented strategy allows them not only to benefit more from CSR, but also to have more tolerance for the uncertainty, risk, and long time-horizon associated with CSR engagement. (shrink)

The present study investigated the lasting effects of sickness presenteeism on well-being and innovative job performance in the demanding Chinese work context compounded with the precarities of the post-pandemic business environment. Adopting the conservation of resources theory perspective, especially its proposition of compensation of resources, we incorporated social resources at work as joint moderators in the presenteeism–outcomes relationship. We employed a panel design in which all variables were measured twice with 6 months in between. Data were obtained from 323 Chinese (...) employees working in diverse industries in Taiwan. We found that after controlling for the baseline level of well-being, presenteeism did not have a lasting effect on employees' exhaustion. However, presenteeism did have a negative lasting effect on employees' innovative behavior 6 months later. Moreover, we found a significant three-way interaction of presenteeism, supervisory support, and collegial support on employees' innovative job performance, after controlling for the baseline level of performance. Specifically, when working under illness, employees displayed the best innovative performance with high levels of both supervisory and collegial support, the worst performance with both support being low, and the intermediate when any one of the support being high. This can be taken as the preliminary evidence to support the COR proposition of resource caravans, showing that supervisory support and collegial support compensated for each other as critical resources in alleviating the impact of working under sickness on employees' innovative performance. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed, taking into account the macro-cultural context of the East Asian Confucian societies. We also reflected on the managerial implications of the lasting damages of sickness presenteeism and benefits of mobilizing social resources on employees' well-being and performance. (shrink)

In recent studies, numerous anomalies against the weak and semi-strong-forms of efficient market hypothesis have been found insignificant after controlling the small-firm effect. We investigate whether the insider trading anomaly, a major anomaly against the strong-form of EMH, can survive after excluding small firms with a novel data set and document several new findings. We find a substantially larger number of insider purchases than sales, while the average volume of insider sales is much higher than the average volume of insider (...) purchases. Echoing recent US studies, we find that insider sales generate more abnormal returns than insider purchases do. We find much lower abnormal returns from insider trading than documented in the literature and the associated trading costs, which suggests that the market efficiency of individual stocks may depend on their sizes, and even the strong-form of EMH holds to a larger extent than previously recognized. (shrink)

In this paper, a normalized robust FOPID controller regulation algorithm is proposed. Only one parameter k is necessary to be tuned in the controller regulation process, so the proposed control algorithm is convenient to be applied on both fractional-order systems and integer-order systems. A robustness evaluation function is constructed based on the small gain theorem. Larger robustness evaluation function value will help the system achieve better robustness performance. Another parameter, β, is also available to serve as a tuning knob when (...) larger robust evaluation function value is needed. Therefore, the controlled systems can be stabilized and can achieve quite satisfactory robust control performance using the proposed algorithm. The corresponding robust analysis results are obtained according to different conditions in the discussion. For a special case of widely used fractional-order systems, the FOPI and FOID controllers are presented based on the same tuning scheme together with their robustness discussion. Some examples are shown to verify the robustness of systems controlled by the proposed algorithm. (shrink)

This study explored the relationship between social support and job satisfaction in kindergarten teachers, and the mediating role of coping styles in this relationship. A sample of 617 kindergarten teachers from kindergartens in mainland China completed questionnaires measuring social support, job satisfaction, and coping style. The results showed that social support was positively related to job satisfaction and positive coping style was positively associated with social support and job satisfaction. Furthermore, the results revealed that positive coping style, but not negative (...) coping style, had a mediating effect on the relationship between kindergarten teachers’ social support and job satisfaction. This study provides initial evidence that coping style mediates the link between social support and job satisfaction in kindergarten teachers, and suggests that increasing social support and encouraging positive coping style could improve kindergarten teachers’ job satisfaction. (shrink)

Genes induced by the plant hormone auxin are probably involved in the execution of vital cellular functions and developmental processes. Experimental approaches designed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of auxin action have focused on auxin perception, genetic dissection of the signaling apparatus and specific gene activation. Auxin‐responsive promoter elements of early genes provide molecular tools for probing auxin signaling in reverse. Functional analysis of several auxin‐specific promoters of unrelated early genes suggests combinatorial utilization of both conserved and variable elements. These (...) elements are arranged into autonomous domains and the combination of such modules generates uniquely composed promoters. Modular promoters allow for auxin‐mediated transcriptional responses to be revealed in a tissue‐ and development‐specific manner. (shrink)

Information on age-related differences in affective meanings of words is widely used by researchers to study emotions, word recognition, attention, memory, and text-based sentiment analysis. To date, no Chinese affective norms for older adults are available although Chinese as a spoken language has the largest population in the world. This article presents the first large-scale age-related affective norms for 2,061 four-character Chinese words (AANC). Each word in this database has rating values in the four dimensions, namely, valence, arousal, dominance, and (...) familiarity. We found that older adults tended to perceive positive words as more arousing and less controllable and evaluate negative words as less arousing and more controllable than younger adults did. This indicates that the positivity effect is reliable for older adults who show a processing bias toward positive vs. negative words. Our AANC database supplies valuable information for researchers to study how emotional characteristics of words influence the cognitive processes and how this influence evolves with age. This age-related difference study on affective norms not only provides a tool for cognitive science, gerontology, and psychology in experimental studies but also serves as a valuable resource for affective analysis in various natural language processing applications. (shrink)

This study combined conservation of resources theory with the job demands-resources model to explore the influence of leader mindfulness on the emotional exhaustion of university teachers Using a time-lagged research design, 388 paired data sets were gathered. Multiple regression and bootstrapping were used to test each hypothesis. The results showed that first, leader mindfulness significantly reduces the emotional exhaustion of university teachers. Second, the results showed that workplace telepressure partially mediates the relationship between leader mindfulness and the emotional exhaustion of (...) university teachers. Third, university teacher mindfulness positively moderates the relationship between leader mindfulness and workplace telepressure. Finally, the results of this study indicate that self-efficacy in managing negative emotions negatively moderates the relationship between workplace telepressure and the emotional exhaustion of university teachers. This study empirically examined the interpersonal influence of leader mindfulness and the initial resources effect of university teacher mindfulness and self-efficacy in managing negative emotions from the bilateral perspective of leaders and university teachers. (shrink)

Positioning accuracy of micropositioning stage in scanning ion conductance microscopy is the key to obtain high-precision scanning model. Most piezoelectric ceramic micromotion platforms are used for that, and hysteresis characteristics are the main reason for the nonlinear characteristics of piezoelectric ceramics and the influence on the control accuracy. In order to solve this problem, backpropagation algorithm based on whale optimization algorithm is used to model the hysteresis, which is directly used as a feedforward controller to compensate the hysteresis effect, and (...) the robust adaptive moving average control method is used for feedback control. The results show that the hysteresis model of backpropagation algorithm based on the whale optimization algorithm can fit the hysteresis curve well, and the maximum fitting error is 0.2050 μm, only 0.256%. By adopting feedforward and feedback, feedforward robust adaptive moving average control algorithm decreases the hysteresis from 17.64% to 2.51%, which enables the output of the piezoelectric ceramic controller to track the expected displacement well and makes it possible to improve the scanning accuracy. (shrink)

Push-pull theory, consumer decision-making models and rational choice theory are commonly used to explain international student mobility. Despite their merits, the individual’s motivation to study abroad is ignored. Based on two motivation theories—expectancy-value theory and self-determination theory, this study examines whether students’ intention to study abroad originates from the students themselves or compromises social pressure and how the external factors defined in push-pull theory work with these motivations to affect their decision-making. A quantitative study was conducted with a sample size (...) of 736 international students in China. The findings show that the decision to study abroad is a highly subjective and intrinsically driven behavior in which realizing one’s self-worth or fulfilling one’s purpose of life plays the most significant role. Making a decision needs a “cost-benefits calculus,” but the utility value of study abroad was positioned behind attainment value and identified motivation. The heterogeneity of international students’ motivation was also differentiated by both their gender and their parents’ educational backgrounds. (shrink)

Objective: Based on how the identity of doctoral students is recognized and understood in the context of Chinese culture, we developed a doctoral identity scale using both qualitative and quantitative analyses.Methods: The initial project of the Scale was formed through qualitative analyses and expert consultation. Nine hundred and ninety-one doctoral students were officially tested, and 982 valid questionnaires were obtained. They were randomly divided into two parts, and 491 of which were assessed for item Response Theory and exploratory factor analysis (...) and 491 of which were assessed for confirmatory factor analysis. The Subjective Well-Being Scale, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale were used to test its the criterion-related validity. One hundred and forty-one students were selected for retesting after 8 weeks.Results: The doctoral student identity questionnaire consisted of two factors identity exploration and identity commitment, explaining 57% of the total variance. The results of CFA showed that the two-factor model fitted the data well. The two dimensions of the Doctoral Student Identity Scale were significantly and positively correlated with the two dimensions of the SWB scale, the latent factor of the RSE scale, and the latent factor of the PSSM scale. Composite reliability values for exploration and commitment were 0.79 and 0.83 respectively, and the values of McDonald’s omega for exploration and commitment were 0.81 and 0.85 respectively. The test-retest reliability of the total questionnaire was 0.842.Conclusion: The Doctoral Student Identity Scale was developed with good reliability and validity, and can be used as a reliable tool for measuring the doctoral student identity. In addition, the questionnaire will provide corresponding ideas and methods for studying the identity issues of specific groups. (shrink)

Background: Upper limb functional exercise has a positive effect on promoting the rehabilitation of upper limb function. However, little is known, about what drives postoperative patients to engage in and even maintain the advised exercises. This study integrated the health action process approach and the theory of planned behavior theory to investigate the psychosocial determinants on the initiation and maintenance of ULFE in breast cancer patients. In addition, this study also tests key hypotheses relating to reasoned and implicit pathways to (...) ULFE and its maintenance among postoperative patients with breast cancer.Methods: Purposive sampling was used to recruit patients from two breast cancer wards in a provincial hospital in Jiangsu, China. Patients completed self-reported questionnaire about constructs from integrated theories concerning ULFE at an initial time point : task self-efficacy, positive outcome expectations, negative outcome expectations, risk perception, attitude behavior, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, behavioral intention, and ULFE-in hospital. Three months later, patients self-reported: maintenance self-efficacy, action planning, coping planning, recovery self-efficacy, and ULFE-maintenance.Results: The model has a good fit. For behavioral intention of ULFE, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control were positively directly related to behavioral intention. Regarding the initiation of ULFE, perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention had a direct positive relation to ULFE-IH. In the maintenance of ULFE, action planning, coping planning, maintenance self-efficacy, and recovery self-efficacy all had significant positive relation on ULFE-M. In addition, maintenance self-efficacy had a significant positive association on action planning, coping planning, and recovery self-efficacy. Coping planning was significantly predicted by behavioral intention. Additionally, behavioral intention is a mediator of subjective norm and perceived behavioral control to ULFE-IH. Action planning, coping planning, and recovery self-efficacy are mediators of maintaining self-efficacy to ULFE-M.Conclusions: This study presents the first attempt to integrate the health behavior model in ULFE in postoperative patients with breast cancer. The study has shown that the HAPA-TPB integrated model has good applicability and effectiveness to explain and predict ULFE initiation and maintenance. Future work can be considered to develop appropriate intervention strategies based on this integrated behavioral theory. (shrink)

The policy of government procurement of elderly care services has the vulnerability characteristics that all complex systems have. To maintain the policy’s robustness, this paper studies the vulnerability of government procurement of elderly care services from the perspective of complex network. Case analysis and sample statistics are used to obtain the vulnerability influencing factors of the policy. Then, complex network diagram of vulnerability influencing factors is constructed through Pajek software. The compatibility coefficient is used to investigate the network’s overall vulnerability (...) from a macro perspective. From a micro perspective, a vulnerability index of the complex network is applied to measure each node’s vulnerability value, and the vulnerability priority of the nodes is established. Results show that government purchasing power and supervisory bodies’ diversity are at the first priority. The remaining vulnerability influencing factors are at the second and the third priority. (shrink)

Hui medicine is originated from Muslim medicine through Silk Road. This medicine is a unique Chinese traditional medicine system formed by the integration of traditional Islamic Arabia medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. This ethnic medicine is Sinicization of Islamic culture. It is also the cream of ancient Eastern and Western traditional medicine of China. Religion is very important for the Islamic faith population such as Hui nationality. Although Halal food, restaurants and schools are everywhere in Qinghai Xining city, there are (...) not reports about the medical practice in the Muslim faith population. In this article, the in-patients are from Qinghai Kangle Hospital which is Hui medicine special hospital located in Hui majorities area in Qinghai Chengdong area. The data had been collected from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2023 of COVID-19 period. This hospital served both Muslim and non-Muslim patients, and the medical doctors nurses and staffs are also come from Muslim and non-Muslim background, the education background is Western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Our results showed that there are no significant difference between the Muslim-believers and non Muslim-believers in their medical practice. The religion may not be important among the inpatients who served with Chinese Hui Medicine in Kangle Hospital. (shrink)

This meta-analysis examines the relationship between materialism and subjective wellbeing in the Chinese population. Fifty-six relevant studies covering the period from 1998 to 2022 were included in the meta-analysis. Fifty-eight independent effect sizes from a total of 52,368 participants were obtained to calculate the mean effect sizes. Materialistic values correlated with significantly lower subjective wellbeing, while the mean effect size for extrinsic aspirations was found to be not significant. The effect sizes varied across different types of wellbeing outcomes. The associations (...) were also moderated by certain demographic factors, methodological factors, publication features, and economic indicators. We discuss our limitations and the implications for future research. (shrink)

The purpose of the study was to solve the problem of the mismatching between the supply and demand of the talents that universities provide for society, whose major is communication design. The correlations between social post demand and university cultivation, as well as between social post demand and the demand indexes of enterprises for posts, are explored under the guidance of University-Industrial Research Collaboration. The backpropagation neural network is used, and the advantages of the Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model (...) model are combined to design the SARIMA-BPNN model after the relevant parameters are adjusted. Through the experimental analysis, it is found that the error of the root mean square of the designed SARIMA-BP model in post prediction is 7.523 and that of the BPNN model is 16.122. The effect of the prediction model that was designed based on deep learning is smaller than that of the previous model based on the neural network, and it can predict future posts more accurately for colleges and universities. Guided by the “University-Industrial Research Collaboration,” students will have more practice in the teaching process in response to social needs. “University-Industrial Research Collaboration” guides the teaching direction for communication design majors and can help to cultivate communication design talents who are competent for the post provided. (shrink)

Background and ObjectivesAnxiety plays an important role in psychology. An exploration of anxiety and its associated reactions may provide insight into measures for addressing mental health problems caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Data from this study provide potential correlational responses to anxiety.MethodsA cross-sectional study using data collected via an online self-reported questionnaire was conducted in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, we assessed anxiety levels and explored the relationship between anxiety STAI-6 score, sources of (...) COVID-19 information, the influences of COVID-19, social anxiety symptoms, discrimination, and evaluation of the government.ResultsA total of 4,127 participants were included in the analysis. The level of anxiety was not equally distributed across the general population with respect to age, gender, educational level, occupation, income, presence of underlying disease, and location. The number of sources of information on COVID-19 had a positive correlation with the STAI-6 score. The influence of the pandemic was correlated with moderate–severe anxiety. A high level of anxiety added to social anxiety and discriminatory behavior. Being female and from a non-emergency area was related to higher STAI scores, and higher education, and income decreased the STAI score. The respondents who had a lower evaluative score of the preventive activities undertaken by the national and local governments had higher STAI-6 scores.ConclusionOur findings provide statistical evidence for the associated reaction of anxiety and that anxiety reactions may vary in predictable ways. Further studies should focus on the strategic interventions that may decrease the associated responses to anxiety, to address mental health issues due to the pandemic. (shrink)

The present study primarily aimed to examine whether self-esteem serves as a mediator in the associations between parent–child relationships, including parental support and parent–child conflict, and resilience among adolescents. Three hundred and four Chinese adolescents were surveyed with questionnaires and structural equation modeling was adopted to test the mediational hypothesis. The results indicated that the associations between parent–child relationships and adolescent resilience were primarily mediated by self-esteem and that parental support was more robustly linked with adolescent resilience than parent–adolescent conflict. (...) The current study also tested a competitive mediational model in which resilience was the mediator and self-esteem was the outcome variable, and observed that this model was also well-established but inferior to the hypothesized mediational model. These findings extend our insight into the mechanisms underlying the associations among parent–child relationships, self-esteem, and resilience among adolescents and suggest that adolescent resilience promotion programs should focus on improving parental support in a family context and developing individual self-esteem. (shrink)

本书分为“我与《周易》”、“《周易》之义理”、“历代易学研究”、“韩国二李易学研究”、“《周易》与史学”五编,基本概括了吕绍纲先生易学研究的各个方面,浓缩了吕绍纲先生易学研究的精华。.

Lu Jia's New Discourses: A Political Manifesto from the Early Han Dynasty is a readable yet accurate translation by Paul R. Goldin and Elisa Levi Sabattini. Celebrated as "a man-of-service with a mouth [skilled] at persuasion", Lu Jia (c. 228-140 BCE) became one of the leading figures of the early Han dynasty, serving as a statesman and diplomat from the very beginning of the Han empire. This book is a translation of Lu Jia's New Discourses, which laid out the reasons (...) for rise and fall of empires. Challenged by the new Emperor to produce a book explaining why a realm that was conquered on horseback cannot also be ruled on horseback, Lu Jia produced New Discourses, to great acclaim. (shrink)

I argue that, since Marx's theory of the cause of alienation is inadequate in accounting for all cases of alienation, his solution to overcoming alienation by abolishing private ownership and the capitalist mode of production is not tenable. The socialist society envisioned by Marx cannot overcome the alienation that he ascribed to the capitalist system and cannot avoid systematically producing its own form of alienation. ;Marx was unable to discover any necessary causal link between alienation and "the movement of private (...) property." Nevertheless, Marx's theory of socialism and communism is based on the assumption that private property is the cause of alienation and that the elimination of private property will eliminate alienation. Marx transformed Hegel's idea of alienation to fit a different context, wherein the solution to alienation was found in an examination of the material conditions of human existence rather than in an overall intellectual understanding of reality. ;Even granted the truth of Marx's belief that the alienation of labor can be entirely eliminated by abolishing private ownership, it does not follow that the other forms of alienation in the realm of the superstructure will necessarily disappear with the transformation of the economic structure. The recognition of the fact that the source of alienation can be something other than private ownership is important to an understanding of the problems that have existed in the twentieth-century socialist societies. ;My analyses of the political alienation caused by the effects of Mao's ideology and the economic alienation caused by the state's control of labor are intended to show the inadequacy of classical Marxist theory in accounting for the realities of not only Mao's regime but of all modern socialist regimes. The irrationality of central planning and the government's exploitation of labor are embedded in the fundamental structure of the socialism envisioned by Marx. These features inevitably become a prominent hindrance to the realization of socialist goals and eventually render these goals impossible. (shrink)