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)

Stephan Darwall (2006, 2010) claims that a conceptual connection exists between moral obligation and what he calls ‘second-personal reasons.’ In particular, he (2006) claims that, “moral obligation is an irreducibly second-personal concept. That an action would violate a moral obligation is…a second-personal reason not to do it.” A second-personal reason, according to him (2006), is “a distinctive kind of (normative) reason for acting,” a reason made on one’s will and purportedly given by an authority’s demand or address. This paper argues (...) that Darwall fails to establish the above conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligation. Since Darwall’s construal of the second-person standpoint is original and the best known version, if I am right, then it seems that there is no conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligations. The implication is that second-personal reasons at best account for only interpersonal morality. (shrink)

We propose the Selfish Goal model, which holds that a person's behavior is driven by psychological processes called goals that guide his or her behavior, at times in contradictory directions. Goals can operate both consciously and unconsciously, and when activated they can trigger downstream effects on a person's information processing and behavioral possibilities that promote only the attainment of goal end-states (and not necessarily the overall interests of the individual). Hence, goals influence a person as if the goals themselves were (...) selfish and interested only in their own completion. We argue that there is an evolutionary basis to believe that conscious goals evolved from unconscious and selfish forms of pursuit. This theoretical framework predicts the existence of unconscious goal processes capable of guiding behavior in the absence of conscious awareness and control (theautomaticity principle), the ability of the most motivating or active goal to constrain a person's information processing and behavior toward successful completion of that goal (thereconfiguration principle), structural similarities between conscious and unconscious goal pursuit (thesimilarity principle), and goal influences that produce apparent inconsistencies or counterintuitive behaviors in a person's behavior extended over time (theinconsistency principle). Thus, we argue that a person's behaviors are indirectly selected at the goal level but expressed (and comprehended) at the individual level. (shrink)

RNA's role in genome rearrangement. Ciliated protists, such as Oxytricha, shown, have two types of nuclei that differentiate from each other. Development in these microbial eukaryotes provides a paragon for studies of genome remodeling, with extensive use of non‐coding RNAs. On pages 84–87 of this issue, Wenwen Fang and Laura Landweber discuss how RNA‐guided processes of genome rearrangement or repair could influence other eukaryotes. Cover by Wenyi Fang. SEM images courtesy of Robert Hammersmith.

RNA's role in genome rearrangement. Ciliated protists, such as Oxytricha, shown, have two types of nuclei that differentiate from each other. Development in these microbial eukaryotes provides a paragon for studies of genome remodeling, with extensive use of non‐coding RNAs. On pages 84–87 of this issue, Wenwen Fang and Laura Landweber discuss how RNA‐guided processes of genome rearrangement or repair could influence other eukaryotes. Cover by Wenyi Fang. SEM images courtesy of Robert Hammersmith.

In the era of eLearning 4.0, many researchers have suggested that multimodal input helps to enhance second language vocabulary learning. However, previous studies on the effects of multimodal teaching have failed to yield definitive conclusions. Furthermore, only few studies on the multimodal input of vocabulary learning have aimed at junior high school students and have focused on explicit vocabulary instruction in class. To explore the effects of multimodal input on English as a foreign language learners’ vocabulary learning and summarize effective (...) methods, this study adopts a mixed-method approach. Based on dual coding theory and cognitive load theory, the teaching materials in this study were designed using the resources provided by the multimodal corpus iWeb and other websites. A total of 60 junior high school students who learned EFL and had a similar English proficiency level were divided into an experimental group and a control group. Target words were selected through questionnaire I. During the experiment, the CG learned from monomodal materials while the EG received multimodal input, and an immediate post-test was delivered to the two groups. Questionnaire II was distributed in the EG, and five students of the EG were randomly selected for an interview. One week later, a delayed post-test was conducted on the EG and CG. The results showed that the EG performed better in the post-test but did worse than the CG in the delayed post-test. The results of the questionnaire and the interview suggest that students held both positive and negative attitudes toward the multimodal input approach in vocabulary learning. The study concludes with some implications for choosing a multimodal input approach in vocabulary learning, along with a number of suggestions on how to optimize its positive influence and minimize its negative effects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Found in Translation: “New People” in Twentieth-Century Chinese Science Fiction by Jing JiangYingying HuangJing Jiang. Found in Translation: “New People” in Twentieth-Century Chinese Science Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. 144 pp. Paperback, ISBN 9780924304941.One of the Association of Asian Studies’ Asia Shorts series, Jing Jiang’s monograph is a delightful 130-page read including notes and a bibliography. It contributes new and cross-cultural perspectives to the Chinese SF (...) scholarship that has recently been invigorated by a plethora of translations into English, animated discussions at conference panels and themed lectures, and book-length studies such as Nathaniel Isaacson’s Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction (2017), which focuses on China’s early twentieth century, and Hua Li’s Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw (2021), which deals with works published between 1978 and 1981, to name just a couple. Jiang’s book covers both periods and the time in between with a purpose to investigate “how Chinese science fiction participates and intervenes in Chinese conceptualizations of the modern at critical junctures over the last century” (1), which Jiang achieves through comparative readings of texts brought into dialogue via translation. A shared theme of the texts studied is, as the book title suggests, the creation of a “new people,” either through edification or high-tech means such as bioengineering. Therefore, the interventions by science fiction that this study is concerned with are chiefly in debates about modern citizenry, subjectivity, and humanity in China’s twentieth century, when science fiction enjoyed its first two “booms.”This book has an introduction, four chapters, and an epilogue. The introduction offers a brief history of Chinese science fiction and announces the author’s intention to “situate Chinese science fiction within a dynamic model of world literature” (2). Jiang makes two crucial points: first, Chinese science fiction is a product of translation and transculturation, which [End Page 591] requires an intertextual and comparative study; second, contrary to its designation as a popular genre in the West, science fiction in China has been a form of elite literature and even a part of statist thinking. While this introduction may seem a bit long for a short book with “conciseness” as one of its marketing guidelines—the account of Lu Xun’s early life and turn to literature, for example, may be a little too elaborate for its purpose (10–12)—it lays a solid foundation for discussions about science fiction’s translingual dimensions and role in China’s nation-building discourse to develop through the chapters.The expansive first chapter, “Medicine for the Mind, Panacea for the Nation: How Did the Stories of Science and Fiction Become One?” is yet another historical survey, occasionally repeating points from the introduction, but this time of the background, genesis, and early growth of science fiction in China from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century (i.e., the late Qing dynasty [1644–1911] and early Republican era [1912–49]). Jiang gives a detailed account of occurrences deemed important to the rise and confluence of fiction and science within China’s nation-building discourse, including literati intellectuals’ promotion of “new fiction” and the dissemination of scientific knowledge, highlighting the roles played by central figures like Liang Qichao, Lu Xun, and John Fryer. Jiang makes the illuminating observation that Fryer’s stipulation of a “new novel” for a fiction contest he organized in Shanghai in 1895 foreshadowed China’s literary realism and the vernacular movement (30), and her remarks about translation, Chinese science fiction’s inherent hybridity, and its mission to cure the nation well echo the book’s central argument about the genre’s interventions.A shorter chapter follows, entitled “Scientifically Formed or Reformed: Bioengineering and Other Fantasies about a New Species of National Subjects,” which examines early science fiction stories about manufacturing humanity and argues that these texts “gave rise to a literary vision that believed literally in the malleability or programmability of the soul” (39). During the first boom of Chinese science fiction in the 1900s, translations of and sequels to Western stories showcase the debate about science’s power of shaping the soul... (shrink)

The issue of how to identify the liability of subjects after a traffic accident takes place remains a puzzle regarding the SAE classification system. The SAE system is not good at dealing with the problem of responsibility evaluation; therefore, building a new classification system for self-driving cars from the perspective of the subject's liability is a possible way to solve this problem. This new system divides automated driving into three levels: i) assisted driving based on the will of drivers, ii) (...) automated driving based on the will of the manufacturers, and iii) fully automated driving based on social will. The corresponding responsible subjects for level one, level two, and level three are the drivers, the manufacturers, and society, respectively. (shrink)

This study explored the factorial and concurrent validity of a scale developed for assessing teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs in engaging with diversity in early childhood education settings. According to tests of measurement invariance, the conceptualization of the constructs varied to some extent between Finnish student teachers and qualified teachers. Qualified teachers reported, at the item level, higher confidence in engaging with diversity in mainstream early childhood classrooms than student teachers. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that for both groups, higher levels of reported (...) confidence in planning and implementing inclusive teaching–learning interactions were related to a higher level of closeness during interactions with children. The evidence for concurrent validity may imply beneficial and reciprocal influences between teachers’ confidence in their professional competence and close teacher–child relationships. The implications of the study are discussed from the perspective of teacher training and professional development in the early childhood education context. (shrink)

The corporate ethics literature has considerably focused on whether giving results in getting. However, the relationship between corporate philanthropy and performance and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Drawing on signaling and cue consistency theories, we develop and test a model that specifies whether, how, and when corporate philanthropy benefits relative competitive performance from a micro-process perspective. Using a Chinese sample of 1623 employees, 145 CEOs, and 145 human resources managers, we found that corporate philanthropy could positively influence relative competitive performance (...) through the internal processes—organization-level citizenship behaviors of employees. Moreover, work–life balance practices strengthen the aforementioned mediation. In particular, when a firm performs high levels of work–life balance practices, corporate philanthropy tends to promote more citizenship behaviors in the entire organization, thereby enhancing the relative competitive performance of the firm. By contrast, when organizations perform low levels of work–life balance practices, the aforementioned mediation becomes nonsignificant. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

This paper approaches Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness from a mereological perspective. Taking as inspiration Bergson’s idea that pure durée is a multiplicity of interpenetration, I will show, from within Husserlian phenomenology, that the absolute flow can indeed be described as a whole of interpenetrating parts. This mereological perspective will inform my re-consideration of the much-discussed issue of Husserl’s self-criticism concerning the schema of content and apprehension. It will also reveal a fundamental similarity between Husserl’s conception of the absolute flow and (...) Sartre’s conception of lived temporality. This paper consists of four sections. Section 2 presents the basic elements of Husserl’s mereology. Section 3 introduces the difficulty encountered by Husserl’s early account of time that makes use of the schema. I will examine Barry Dainton’s criticism of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness against the background of the older debate between Meinong and Stern, a debate that has informed Husserl’s own account. Section 4 distinguishes two common criticisms of the schema from Husserl’s own self-criticism, which is in turn divided into two steps. It is shown how the second step of this self-criticism implies the interpenetration of the absolute flow and responds to Dainton’s criticism. Finally, Sect. 5 concludes with some comparative remarks. I will show how Husserl’s notion of absolute flow, as mereologically interpreted, anticipates Sartre’s conception of consciousness as self-transcendence, as well as how it accommodates the apparently conflicting mereological intuitions of Aristotle and Bergson. (shrink)

This is a premature baby. I have decided to submit this rather immature essay to the circle of scholarship mainly because of two considerations, each of which, I must admit, carries with it some deeper concerns.

_A wide ranging consideration of the work of contemporary ethicist David Wong._.

Intra-organization and inter-organization collaboration and governance are becoming increasingly important for megaprojects. Different stakeholders form intricate links in a network structure. This study explores the role and effect of hybrid governance on complex network projects, such as urban rail transit projects. This included conducting a questionnaire survey with 116 professionals from organizations involved in urban rail transit projects and adopting structural equation modelling to analyze the data. The results analyzed the levels of intra-organization and inter-organization trust under the conditions of (...) power asymmetry and power sharing. A higher level of power asymmetry was associated with lower hybrid governance performance. In contrast, a higher level of power sharing is associated with better hybrid governance performance. The results are generalizable to other projects with complicated organizational and network relationships. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze the evolution of Husserl's view on the normativity of logic and the corresponding changes in his phenomenological analysis of judgment. Initially, in the Prolegomena, Husserl claimed that the laws of pure logic are ideal and acquire normative status only as a result of application. Later, however, he revised this position and claimed that the same laws are at once ideal and normative. Sections 1 and 2 present textual evidence for attributing such a change of position (...) to Husserl, which is not generally acknowledged in the literature. Section 3 critically examines Husserl's early position, with specific attention to the model of instantiation. Sections 4–6 identify three key stages in the development of Husserl's theory of judgment that lead to the normative conception of pure logic: (1) the critique of the dissociation of ideal content and assertive force; (2) the rejection of the instantiation model of proposition and the development of a new account in terms of identification; (3) the genetic‐phenomenological interpretation of proposition and the elaboration of the three‐layer structure of pure logic. (shrink)

As the world has turned into a global village, it has created many challenges for human resource departments regarding the management of a diverse workforce in satisfying the employees and creating a diverse yet safe environment for them that does not make them uncomfortable. The current study has investigated the effect of human resource practices on the diversity climate with the mediation of job satisfaction. The data has been collected from human resource personnel of multinationals in China with the help (...) of 316 participants. The study deployed SEM analysis to analyze and measure the effect of training and development along with performance appraisal on the diversity climate. The findings of the study revealed that training and growth or development do not have an impact on the diversity climate, however, performance appraisal has a strong positive impact. Similarly, the mediating role of job satisfaction has been found to ensure the relationship of training and development and performance appraisal with the diversity climate. This study has provided certain implications for the HR managers of multinationals to ensure a secure diversity climate for a diverse workforce. (shrink)

The basic aim of this research study is to describe the Applications of the fusion of aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in film and television music production. This research study depends upon primary data analysis for measuring the research study to generate different questions related to the aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy to determine the research study used smart PLS and run different results related to the variables. Modern philosophy of art includes the philosophy of film as a well-established subfield. (...) Although philosophers were among the first academics to write studies of the new art form in the early decades of the twentieth century, the area did not enjoy considerable development until the 1980s, when a resurgence began. The rapid expansion of this sector can be attributed to a wide variety of factors. Let it be enough to state that the evolution of philosophy as a discipline and the growing importance of cinema in popular culture has made it crucial for philosophers to view the film as an art form on par with literature, music, and the visual arts. The overall research study found that there are negative and some positive relations between aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in music production. The result found that significant relationship between aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in film and television. (shrink)

If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially comparable non-ethicists. We examined three types of courteous and discourteous behavior at American Philosophical Association conferences: talking audibly while the speaker is talking (versus remaining silent), allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session (versus attempting to close the door quietly), and leaving behind clutter at the end of a session (versus leaving one's seat tidy). (...) By these three measures, audiences in ethics sessions did not appear to behave any more courteously than did audiences in non-ethics sessions. However, audiences in environmental ethics sessions did appear to leave behind less trash. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn diesem Aufsatz vertrete ich die These, dass Poppers Konversion zum naiven Realismus seine eigene Theorie der Falsifikation aushöhlt. Tarskis Definition der Wahrheit ist eine semantische; wir dürfen sie nicht so interpretieren, als ob sie uns ein erkenntnistheoretisches Kriterium fur die Wahrheit lieferte. Poppers Wahrheitsbegriff hat keine semantische Funktion und bietet uns kein brauchbares Kriterium für die Beurteilung von Theorien. Seine Einführung markiert meines Erachtens nur einen Rückzug in die Metaphysik.SummaryIn this paper I have tried to show that Popper's conversion (...) to naive realism undermines his own idea of falsification. Tarski's definition of truth is a semantical notion and therefore should not be interpreted as having something to do with the epistemological question regarding the criteria of truth. Since Poppers notion of truth has no semantical function and does not provide us with a criterion for judging the truth of theories, I think it fosters a retreat into metaphysics.RésuméJ'ai essayé de montrer, dans cet article, que la conversion de Popper au réalisme naïf vide de sa substance sa propre théorie de la falsification. La définition tarskienne de la vérité est une définition sémantique; on ne peut pas ľinterpréter comme fournissant un critère épistémologique de vérité Le concept de vérité de Popper n'a pas de fonction sémantique et n'apporte pas de critère utilisable pour juger les théories. Son introduction ne représente, à mon avis, qu'une régression vers la métaphysique. (shrink)

SummaryInstead of telling us why one should or should not derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, most philosophers try to see whether this can or cannot be done. Since there are no clearly stated rules of inference for the ordinary language, the is‐ought dichotomy is re‐examined within the context of the deontic logic. This paper shows that rules like ‐AB ÓOB enables us to adopt the theorems of the propositional logic normatively, because logical standards for exactness, truth, completeness, etc. are (...) all values and conventions accepted by the deontic logicians right from the beginning.RésuméLa plupart des philosophes reste attachée à une manière incorrecte de poser la question de la dichotomie entre ce qui est et ce qui devrait être. Au lieu de se demander, avec Hume, si nous avons de bonnes raisons ?on;autoriser ou ?on;interdire des raisonnements qui concluent de ľêtre au devoir être, des philosophes tels que Searle se demandent si de tels raisonnements sont possibles dans une langue naturelle. Comme, dans une telle langue, nous n'avons pas de règie univoque pour la déduction logique, j'examine la règie de la logique déontique AB OAOB selon la formalisation de Azizah al‐Hibri. Je montre que la règie ne viole pas du tout ľinterdiction de conclure ?on;énonces de faits à des énoncés normatifs. Car dans la logique déontique, les règies et les théorèmes de la logique des propositions sont utilisés dans un sens normatif.ZusammenfassungIn bezug auf die ‘Sein‐Sollen‐Dichotomie’ scheinen die meisten Philosophen bis jetzt auf einer falschen Fragestellung zu beharren. Anstatt wie Hume zu fragen, ob wir gute Gründe haben, Schlüsse von Sein und Sollen zuzulassen oder zu verbieten, versuchen Philosophen wie etwa Searle festzustellen, ob wir dies im Rahmen der natürlichen Sprache tun konnen. Da wir in der natürlichen Sprache keine eindeutige Regel für logische Schlüsse haben, wird die Regel der deontischen Logik nach der Formalisierung von Azizah al‐Hibri untersucht. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Regel keineswegs das Verbot, von 1st‐Sätzen auf Soll‐Sätze zu schliessen, verletzt. Denn in der deontischen Logik werden die Regeln und Theoreme der Satzlogik in einem norrnativen Sinn gebraucht. (shrink)

Objects: With the advent of genetic technologies, many genetic/metabolic disorders can be detected asymptomatically but might be untreatable, and the benefits and risks of screening for them are not fully known. The purpose of this study is to explore current practice with regard to the parental consent process in newborn screening .Design: Staff in 23 obstetric clinics/hospitals that conduct NBS in one city of southern Taiwan were interviewed. Using content analysis, 15 interview transcripts, eight completed questionnaires, and other relevant documents (...) from the 23 clinics/hospitals were analysed to reveal the framework of the parental consent process in NBS in southern Taiwan.Main measures: Three categories—informed consent, informed dissent, and no informed/consent—were developed to analyse the parental consent process in NBS.Results: The parental consent procedures in NBS and the quality of the information provided before obtaining consent vary widely. Because the traditional NBS was incorporated into routine paediatric practices in most clinics/hospitals, the most frequently encountered consent model is “informed dissent” and “no informed/consent” ; while an “informed consent” model is the frequent model for screening rare metabolic/genetic disorders.Conclusions: Specific guidelines to regulate the parental consent process for NBS are essential. Further studies should investigate parental responses to NBS, taking these as the basis on which to establish an informed consent model in Taiwan. (shrink)

Abstract Chinese culture has remained steady, stretching through time as long and unbroken as the Great Wall. In thousands of years, Chinese culture has exhibited a remarkable ability to assimilate foreign intrusions. Even though several times throughout Chinese history minority nationalities have been in military and political control of China, they were gradually assimilated by Chinese culture. Christianity has spent more than a thousand years attempting to convert the Chinese with only negligible success. However, why was Marxism able to become (...) the dominant ideology in only 30 years? This article discusses the critical cultural roots of the different destinies of Marxism and Christianity within the Great Wall. (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)

Zhu’s doctrine of “liyi fenshu” shows the balanced ecological transmission of pattern among phenomena. However, used as an ideology it becomes a tool of the central authority. The author takes this...

As the labeling costs in legal artificial intelligence tasks are expensive. Therefore, it becomes a challenge to utilize low cost to train a robust model. In this paper, we propose a LAIAugment approach, which aims to enhance the few-shot learning capability in legal artificial intelligence tasks. Specifically, we first use the self-training approach to label the amount of unlabelled data to enhance the feature learning capability of the model. Moreover, we also search for datasets that are similar to the training (...) set by improving the text similarity function. We conducted experimental analyses for three legal artificial intelligence tasks, including evidence extraction, legal element extraction, and case multi-label prediction, which composed of 3500 judgement documents. The experimental results show that the proposed LAIAugment method has an average F1-score of 72.3% on the three legal AI tasks, which is 1.93% higher than the baseline model. At the same time, it shows a huge improvement in few-shot learning. (shrink)

Recent revisions to the Conservation of Resources theory have not only reclassified categories of resources, but have also acknowledged the conceptual importance of “gain spirals” and “resource caravans” in enriching the theoretical understanding of resources. Given that teachers’ assessment literacy is a prominent yet underexplored personal constructive resource in teaching, this paper examines its role in teaching efficacy. In addition, personal energy resources are studied as antecedents to teaching efficacy. To this end, a survey based on the Chinese versions of (...) the Teacher Assessment Literacy Scale, the Teaching Efficacy Scale, the Psychological Capital Scale, and the Teacher Professional Identity Scale was administered to secondary school teachers in Henan Province, China, and 351 completed, valid surveys were returned. The findings indicated that the teachers’ assessment literacy and teaching efficacy were positively correlated, verifying that assessment literacy can influence teaching efficacy through the separate and chain mediation effects of psychological capital and professional identity. The identification of such mediating pathways has confirmed that resources owned by teachers can lead to gain spirals and full resource caravans, thus expanding the Conservation of Resources theory by positing that resources can be nested within one another. This study has theoretical implications for teaching efficacy research and the Conservation of Resources theory as well as practical implications regarding how to boost teachers’ constructive and energy resources and professional development. (shrink)

This study examines whether penalties issued to Chinese listed companies by securities regulators for violations of corporate law affect the cost of debt, and the moderating role of corporate social responsibility fulfillment on this relationship. Our sample consists of firms listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2011 to 2017 and the data are collected from the announcements of China Securities Regulatory Commission. The findings are as follows: punishment announcements by regulatory authorities increase the cost of debt; and the (...) effect of punishment announcements on the cost of debt is partially offset by prior CSR performance. These findings are shown to be robust. The reputation insurance effect of CSR is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises and in an institutional environment with low marketization, a weak legal environment, and low information transparency. The findings support the reputation insurance hypothesis of CSR and employ the cost of debt as a governance mechanism. (shrink)

Psychopaths are often regarded as a scourge of contemporary society and, as such, are the focus of much public vilification and outrage. But, arguably, psychopaths are both sinned against as well as sinners. If that is true, then their status as the victims of abusive subcultures partially mitigates their moral responsibility for the harms they cause. We argue, from the neuroethics of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), that communities have a moral obligation to psychopaths as well as a case (...) against them. A reflection on the genesis and developmental epidemiology of psychopathy reveals an individualist, attribution-type error evident in much Western psychological and legal thinking—an error that obscures important moral truths about psychopaths. The resulting analysis makes us reconsider the distinction between disorders and moral failings and the ethical significance of the biological or neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning psychopathy. We claim that casting aside the deficit model (based on the presupposition that psychopaths are intrinsically unlike the rest of us) in favor of a relational and holistic view of personality potentiates a more informed and inclusive set of ethical, forensic, and therapeutic attitudes. (shrink)

The extraction of natural resources is a controversial business practice that has profound ethical and economic risk implications for both firms involved in extractive activities and society at large. In response to these implications, the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to create the first ever rules requiring annual corporate responsibility disclosures. The two proposed rules, requiring disclosure of the source of “conflict minerals” and of payments to foreign governments by extractive firms, conjured intense debate among (...) stakeholders, largely related to the risks of firms providing the information. These risks span from required disclosures increasing compliance costs for firms to non-disclosure threatening human rights. In this study, we seek to understand the way in which stakeholders perceive the risks associated with corporate responsibility disclosures. We analyze comment letters submitted to the SEC related to the two disclosure rules through the lens of Douglas’s cultural perspectives of risk. We find consistencies across the two proposed disclosures with regard to the presence of three risk perspectives within the comment letter discourse for each proposal. We find inconsistencies, however, in the underlying nature of risk perceived across the two rules, which we argue reveals an aspect of risk that incorporates ethicality and is ultimately linked to reputational considerations. We complement these insights by analyzing the market reaction to the proposed regulations. Overall, our analysis suggests that stakeholders’ perceptions of risk have consequences for how risk is perceived and acted upon in the market. (shrink)