Banks play a unique role in society. They not only maximize profits but also consider the interests of stakeholders. We investigate whether banks consider firms’ pollution records in their lending decisions. The evidence shows that banks offer significantly higher loan spreads, higher total borrowing costs, shorter loan maturities, and greater collateral to firms with higher levels of chemical pollution. The costly effects are stronger for borrowers with greater risk and weaker corporate governance. Further, the results show that banks with higher (...) social responsibility account for their borrowers’ environmental performance and charge higher loan spreads to those with poor performance. These results support the idea that banks with higher social responsibility can promote the practice of business ethics in firms. (shrink)

Recent studies on the effects of mandatory online teaching, resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, have widely reported low levels of satisfaction, unwillingness to continue online teaching, and negative impacts on the psychological well-being of teachers. Emerging research has highlighted the potential role of psychological need thwarting, in terms of autonomy, competence, and relatedness thwarting, resulting from online teaching. The aim of this study was to evaluate the immediate and delayed effects of PNT of online teaching on teachers’ well-being, intention to (...) continue online teaching, and job satisfaction. Moreover, data collected from both cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys allowed for a systematic validation of an important instrument in the field of teacher psychology, the Psychological Need Thwarting Scale of Online Teaching, in terms of longitudinal reliability and validity. The data reveal the usefulness of the construct of PNT in terms predicting and explaining teachers’ willingness to continue using online teaching as well as the degree of burnout after a period of 2 months, such that PNT is positively associated with burnout and negatively associated with willingness to continue online teaching. As such, the PNTSOT is recommended for future research evaluating the long-term psychological, affective, and intentional outcomes stemming from teachers’ PNT. Moreover, based on our findings that the impact from PNT of online teaching is persistent and long-term, we suggest that school leaders provide flexible and sustained professional development, model respectful and adaptive leadership, and create opportunities for mastery for the development of community of practice that can mitigate the thwarting of teachers’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness during times of uncertainty. Additionally, in terms of the psychometric properties of the PNTSOT instrument, our empirical findings demonstrate internal reliability, test–retest reliability, measurement invariance, and criterion validity based on cross-sectional and longitudinal data. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What characterizes human reasoning is the ability of dealing with incomplete information. Incomplete logic is developed for modeling incomplete knowledge. The most distinctive feature of incomplete logic is its semantics. This is an alternative presentation of partial semantics. In this paper, we will introduce the general notion of incomplete logic (ICL), compare it with partial logic, and give the resolution method for it. We will also show how ICL can be applied to nonmonotonic reasoning. We define nonmonotonic derivation as (...) monotonic derivation in ICL from the database and some consistent assumptions. The mechanism of ICL makes it easy to assert the consistency of an assumption without asserting the assumption itself. (shrink)

This essay argues that the idea of name-rectification ( zheng ming 正名) in the Xunzi can be properly reconstructed as revealing a normative pragmatic semantic theme that linguistic contents embody, and are embedded in, the normative, justificatory network, or pattern, of dao li 道理 (proper routes/patterns of norm) which, in turn, is constituted and manifested by social inferential justificatory practices of bian shuo 辯說 (dialectical justification/explanation).

Aging of the organism is associated with highly reproducible DNA methylation (DNAm) changes, which facilitate estimation of donor age. Cancer is also associated with DNAm changes, which may contribute to disease development. Here, we speculate that age‐associated DNAm changes may increase the risk of tumor initiation. Notably, when using epigenetic signatures for age‐estimations tumor cells are often predicted to be much older than the chronological age of the patient. We demonstrate that aberrant hypermethylation within the gene DNA methyltransferase 3A (DNMT3A) (...) – which may contribute to initiation of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) – is particularly observed in AML samples that reveal significantly more age‐associated DNAm changes. The functional relevance of age‐associated DNAm changes remains to be elucidated, but they occur genome wide, in a highly reproducible manner, and most likely influence chromatin organization – and hence may favor acquisition of aberrant DNAm patterns contributing to cancer in the elderly. (shrink)

The authors aim to explore a better fitting leadership style that is designed for the sustainable era in believing and committing to work for cherishing resources and developing the organization toward a new sustainable direction. This study developed the questionnaire items of the Resource-Dilemma-Handling-Leadership scale, representing a new sustainable era's new leadership style, and then to compare it with the transformational leadership style in order to highlight the importance of RHDL for sustainable development. This study took companies, which have more (...) than 100 employees in Taiwan as research samples. Those companies were selected because they were socially tagged as being operating continuously for more than 20 years and identifying themselves with the operational orientation of social responsibility as their business philosophy and core values for management. A total of 532 valid questionnaires were collected, with a 90.6% valid return rate, and tested with the SEM method. Consistent with the authors' inferences from the literature, the test results suggest that CSR plays the role of full mediator between RDHL and OC. CSR itself is like a sense of responsibility, giving employees a sense of mission, to complete meaningful sustainability-relevant tasks in the organization. RDHL, compared with TL, has a better prediction power on CSR and OC. Theoretically, this study implies that the impact of leadership of the organization on OC in the aspects of sustainable development should be going through the influence of the ELB system in the form of CSR to promote the organization's internal and external organizational CSR performance, with added internal strengthening power from OC. Practically, the new RDHL concepts brought up by this study include the training and enhancement of leadership skills based on the content of the scale items being explored. The new RDHL scale contains a comprehensive description of the spirit of the new sustainable era's leadership style. Also, the future applications of RDHL ideas in the form of human resource development should help the realization of the ideally sustainability behavioral patterns of leaders and employees in the organizations. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to criticisms of my book Being and Reason recently made by Yitzhak Melamed.

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, Victor and Cullen's (Adm Sci Q 33:101-125, 1988) typology of ethical climates has been employed by many academics in research on issues of ethical climates. However, little is known about how managerial practices such as communication and empowerment influence ethical climates, especially from a functional perspective. The current study used a survey of employees from Taiwan's top 100 patent-owning companies to examine how communication and empowerment affect organizational ethical climates. The results confirm the relationship between (...) these two managerial practices and organizational ethical climates. We discuss our results and their implications for both future academic research and practice. (shrink)

The desire-satisfaction theory of welfare says that what is basically good for a subject is the satisfaction of his desires. One challenge to this view is the existence of quirky desires, such as a desire to count blades of grass. It is hard to see why anyone would desire such things, and thus hard to believe that the satisfaction of such desires could be basically good for anyone. This suggests that only some desires are basically good when satisfied, and that (...) desire satisfactionists owe us an account of which desires these are, and why. In "Quirky Desires and Well-Being," Donald Bruckner proposes such an account: a desire is welfare-relevant (i.e., such that its satisfaction would be basically good for its subject) if and only if and because its subject could describe its object in a way that makes it comprehensible what about the object attracts him or appeals to him. We are inclined to view quirky desires as welfare-irrelevant because we assume that their objects cannot be described in such a way. But if there were a quirky desire whose object could be so described by the subject whose desire it is, then this desire would be relevant to that subject's welfare. I will argue that while Bruckner's view delivers plausible verdicts about the cases to which it is meant to apply, its account of what makes a desire welfare-relevant is unmotivated and implausible. Desire satisfactionists can retain what is plausible about his view while endorsing a better explanation of why welfare-relevant desires have that status if they accept the following account instead: a desire is welfare-relevant if and only if and because something about its object attracts, or appeals to, the subject who has the desire. (shrink)

The idea that the household was the fundamental building block of ancient Greek society, explicit in the ancient sources, has now become widely accepted. It is no exaggeration to say that ancient Athenians would have found it almost inconceivable that individuals of any status existed who did not belong to some household; and the few who were in this position were almost certainly regarded as anomalous. In ancient Athens, as elsewhere, households ‘are a primary arena for the expression of age (...) and sex roles, kinship, socialization and economic cooperation’. It has been suggested for modern Greece that our own cultural biases, along with the Greek ideology of male dominance, have led to the assumption that the foundations of power in Greek society lie solely in the public sphere, and that domestic power is ‘less important’. In a less simple reality the preeminent role of the household cannot be underestimated. Here I hope to question similar assumptions about ancient Greece, focusing in particular on the relationships that existed between Athenian households and the property of the individuals, particularly women, within these households. (shrink)

In this paper I test major analytic theories of interpretation, including anti-intentionalism, the value-maximizing theory, actual intentionalism, and hypothetical intentionalism, against Li Shang-yin’s poem ‘The Ornamented Zither’. I argue that, based on the results of the test, all of these theories face grave difficulties. If their supporters want their accounts to be sustained in the debate over interpretation, they need to address the worries I raise.

One of the biggest challenges of the study and practice of ethics is that of the moral dilemma, e.g. how should a compassionate person deal with injustice? This paper attempts to resolve this thorny issue from the perspective of Buddhist philosophy. I firstly introduce the 14th Dalai Lama’s distinction between act and actor and suggest a way to denounce wrongful acts without harboring hatred towards the perpetrator. Secondly, I argue that the philosophical grounds of this distinction can be traced back (...) to ancient Buddhist texts on Non-Self and Emptiness, which take all things as being in a constant state of change. Thirdly, I point out that a unique feature of the ‘empty ethics’ of Buddhism is that it inspires a middle way approach which allows for congruity between justice and compassion, between the realistic and the idealistic, and between rationality and sentimentality. Based on this, I suggest that it has much to contribute to contemporary ethics. (shrink)

Experimentation is at the heart of scientific inquiry. In the behavioral and neural sciences, where only a limited number of observations can often be made, it is ideal to design an experiment that leads to the rapid accumulation of information about the phenomenon under study. Adaptive experimentation has the potential to accelerate scientific progress by maximizing inferential gain in such research settings. To date, most adaptive experiments have relied on myopic, one-step-ahead strategies in which the stimulus on each trial is (...) selected to maximize inference on the next trial only. A lingering question in the field has been how much additional benefit would be gained by optimizing beyond the next trial. A range of technical challenges has prevented this important question from being addressed adequately. This study applies dynamic programming, a technique applicable for such full-horizon, “global” optimization, to model-based perceptual threshold estimation, a domain that has been a major beneficiary of adaptive methods. The results provide insight into conditions that will benefit from optimizing beyond the next trial. Implications for the use of adaptive methods in cognitive science are discussed. (shrink)

Objectives: The N2b is an event-related potential component thought to index higher-order executive function. While the impact of concussion on executive functioning is frequently discussed in the literature, limited research has been done on the role of N2b in evaluating executive functioning in patients with concussion. The aims of this review are to consolidate an understanding of the cognitive functions reflected by the N2b and to account for discrepancies in literature findings regarding the N2b and concussion.Methods: A scoping review was (...) conducted on studies that used the N2b to measure cognitive functioning in healthy control populations, as well as in people with concussions.Results: Sixty-six articles that met inclusion criteria demonstrated that the N2b effectively represents stimulus-response conflict management, response selection, and response inhibition. However, the 19 included articles investigating head injury found widely varied results: some studies found the amplitude of the N2b to be increased in the concussion group, while others found it to be decreased or unchanged.Conclusion: Based on the available evidence, differences in the amplitude of the N2b have been linked to response selection, conflict, and inhibition deficits in concussion. However, due to large variations in methodology across studies, findings about the directionality of this effect remain inconclusive. The results of this review suggest that future research should be conducted with greater standardization and consistency. (shrink)

From the 1920s to the 1960s, Martin Heidegger on several occasions referred to the early Greeks’ encounter with what he called ‘the Asiatic’ (_das Asiatische_). Meanwhile, he was also concerned with a sort of ontological power of destruction and ruination that according to him should be understood in the Greek sense, which he also called _das Asiatische_. In this article, I first sketch the contributions made by Asian/African traditions to the origin of Greek philosophy and highlight Heidegger’s own recognition of (...) it in the 1920s. Second, I examine Nietzsche’s remarks bearing on the early Greeks’ intricate bond with the Asiatic, which is formulated in terms of a distinction between the ‘Dionysiac Greeks’ and the ‘Dionysiac barbarians.’ Third, I scrutinize Heidegger’s relevant statements—especially those in the 1930s—in the light of Nietzsche’s influence on him. I argue that two different meanings of the Asiatic are at play in Heidegger’s thought: One is the _Greek Asiatic_, the Being-historical Asiatic; The other is the _alien Asiatic_, ‘the most foreign and most difficult’ Asiatic, which has been overcome by the Greeks. Fourth, I show that in the 1960s Heidegger seems to consider a sort of conflation of these two meanings—a conflation that remains fraught with tension. (shrink)

The utterance model is a popular basis for theories of interpretation in the contemporary analytic philosophy of literature. This model suggests that interpretation should be constrained by a work's identity‐relevant factors in its context of production because a work, like an utterance, acquires its identity and content in part from its relations with that context. From a descriptive point of view, I argue that the implied author account of interpretation best describes critical practice following the current positions based on the (...) utterance model. That is, people who interpret in accordance with these positions end up interpreting an implied author. (shrink)

A autora examina a relação entre a auto-imagem na terceira idade e a construção de uma identidade pessoal. O papel de espelho da mãe, da família e da sociedade em sentido mais amplo adquire, em determinada etapa do amadurecimento, uma importância relevante na construção de um si-mesmo autêntico e singular. Depoimentos pessoais de duas cineastas e relato clínico são utilizados na aplicação das proposições teóricas de D. W. Winnicott sobre a relação entre ser e ser visto.The author examines the relationship (...) between self-image in old age and the construction of personal identity. The role of mirror played by the mother, the family and the society acquires, in large part, in a certain phase of maturity, an important role in the construction of an authentic and singular I. Personal accounts of two filmmakers and clinical reports are utilized in the application of the theoretical proposals of D. W. Winnicott regarding the relation between being and being seen. (shrink)

Based on a 12-year bibliographic record collected from the Web of Science database, the present study aims to provide a macroscopic overview of the knowledge domain in financial decision making. A scientometric and bibliometric analysis was conducted on the literature published in the field from 2010 to 2021, using the CiteSpace software. The analysis focuses on the co-occurring categories, the geographic distributions, the vital references, the distribution of topics, as well as the research fronts and emerging trends of financial related (...) decision making. The steady increase of papers published year by year demonstrated the increasing interest on this topic at the international level. The scientometric analysis of the literature showed that financial decision, investment decision, and financing decision stood out of the crowd of the research on FDM, suggesting their important role in FDM and its research. The results of citation burst analysis predicted the focus of topics, i.e., the impact of individual differences such as financial literacy, gender and age on FDM in the coming years. Different from the traditional approach of literature review, this bibliometric analysis offers a scientometric approach to reveal the status quo and the development trend of FDM by macro and quantitative means. In addition, future research directions for the field are recommended. (shrink)

There are numerous occasions on which we need to reason about a finite number of events. And we often need to consider only those events which are given or which we perceive. These give rise to the Criteria of Finiteness and Closedness. Allen's logic provides a way of reasoning about events. In this paper I examine Allen and Hayes' axiomatisation of this logic, and develop two other axiomatisations based on the work by Russell and Thomason. I shall show that these (...) three axiomatisations are weakly equivalent, and that only the last two meet the Criteria of Finiteness and Closedness (to different degrees). I shall then examine two ways of constructing instants of time in a finite and closed world, i.e. the Russell construction and the Thomason construction. I shall prove that these two constructions are equivalent under certain conditions. (shrink)

An accumulating amount of research has documented the harmful effects of abusive supervision on either its victims or third parties (peer abusive supervision). The abusive supervision literature, however, neglects to investigate the spillover effects of abusive supervision through third-party employees’ (i.e., peers’) mistreatment actions toward victims. Drawing on social learning theory, we argue that third parties learn mistreatment behaviors from abusive leaders and then themselves impose peer harassment and peer ostracism on victims, thereby negatively affecting victims’ performance. Further, we posit (...) that, if a victim has a proactive personality, this will weaken these indirect, negative effects. We conducted two studies, both with three-wave longitudinal data, to verify the hypotheses. The results of Study 1 evidence the significant indirect effects of abusive supervision on employee creative performance via both peer harassment and peer ostracism. Contrary to our moderation hypothesis, the analysis shows that victims’ proactive personality strengthens rather than weakens the negative indirect effects of peer harassment. Study 2 generally replicated the results of Study 1 with employee’s objective job performance as outcome. Our research contributes to the abusive supervision literature by highlighting a social learning process of third-party peer mistreatment, suggesting a spillover channel of abusive supervision on the victim’s performance. (shrink)

In this paper, I first address two facets that can play a role in initiating a paradigm shift in comparative studies of Heidegger and Chinese philosophy: One is the necessity of renovating methodology in studies of Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy. The other is an adequate understanding of Heidegger’s own comportment toward East-West dialogue. In this connection I briefly respond to some criticisms of my book Heidegger on East-West Dialogue: Anticipating the Event. Then I stake out three directions of re-configuration (...) or reorientation entailed in such a paradigm shift. The first direction is concerned with a deconstruction of the notion of philosophy. The second direction is related to a critical and intercultural approach to Heidegger’s thinking. The third direction is connected with the overcoming of the unilateral direction in comparative studies. (shrink)

This essay initiates elements of a Daoist stance as regards the basic assumptions and principles involved in debates on multiculturalism. This is to be achieved via an examination of Zhang Taiyan’s 章太炎 mid-term political philosophy, which is shaped by his interpretation and further development of Daoist thinking, especially the notion of no-thing and the idea of “achieving equality by leaving things uneven”. After explicating the basic tenets that point toward a Daoist stance on what is now called multiculturalism, I discuss (...) Zhang’s concrete proposals concerning the relation between the Han 漢 lineage and the other four major ethnic groups in the to-be-established Republic of China. I then investigate Zhang’s unique theory of the state. Lastly, I explore the discordance in Zhang Taiyan’s thinking despite his privileging of Laozi 老子 and Zhuangzi’s 莊子 ideas. (shrink)