Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 209-223, January 2022.

The purpose of this study is to extend prior research on this topic by investigating whether the impact of ownership concentration moderates the link between corporate social performance and financial performance. This study uses a set of unique, hand-collected pollution control data to measure CSP, based on a sample of Taiwanese listed companies during the period from 1996 to 2006. The results of the empirical analysis provide firm support for the idea that the divergence between control rights and the cash (...) flow rights of controlling owners negatively moderates the link between social and short- and long-run FP. (shrink)

Background: Cognitive impairment is one of the core symptoms of schizophrenia, which is considered to be significantly correlated to prognosis. In recent years, many studies have suggested that metabolic disorders could be related to a higher risk of cognitive defects in a general setting. However, there has been limited evidence on the association between metabolism and cognitive function in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Methods: In this study, we recruited 172 patients with early-stage schizophrenia. Relevant metabolic parameters were examined and cognitive function (...) was evaluated by using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) to investigate the relationship between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment.Results: Generally, the prevalence of cognitive impairment among patients in our study was 84.7% (144/170), which was much higher than that in the general population. Compared with the general Chinese setting, the study population presented a higher proportion of metabolic disturbance. Patients who had metabolic disturbance showed no significant differences on cognitive function compared with the other patients. Correlation analysis showed that metabolic status was significantly correlated with cognitive function as assessed by the cognitive domain scores (p < 0.05), while such association was not found in further multiple regression analysis.Conclusions: Therefore, there may be no association between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02880462. Registered August 26, 2016. (shrink)

The adaptive object model method is an effective way to develop dynamic and configurable adaptive software. It has the characteristics of metamodel, description drive, and runtime reflection. First, the core idea of the adaptive object model is explained; then, the five modes of establishing the metamodel in the adaptive object model architecture, the model engine, and supporting tools are analyzed; and the basketball tracking algorithm of the adaptive object model is discussed. Secondly, a two-dimensional joint information strategy is proposed to (...) improve the tracking effect. When the basketball is in a very complex environment, there will always be some color information in the background that is the same as the target, which affects the effect of basketball tracking. Therefore, this paper proposes a Camshift tracking method based on the significance of histograms, through real time. The basketball movement is compared with the background histogram to continuously adjust the basketball movement tracking model. These two methods can better establish the tracking model of the basketball adaptive object, reduce the interference of background information, and achieve the effect of stable tracking of the target. The simulation experiment results show that the method proposed in this paper can effectively improve the accuracy of the basketball goal model and achieve stable tracking of the goal. (shrink)

Mei in Chinese is normally translated into English as "beauty" or "the beautiful." The nature of mei is not a central theme in Zhuangzi's philosophy; neither is it a concept of particular importance in traditional Chinese aesthetics. The core concepts of Chinese aesthetics, according to historians of Chinese aesthetics, are dao, qi, and xiang, but mei is not one of them.1 In Chinese aesthetic history, we see different points of emphasis in contrast to the prevailing concern with beauty in Western (...) aesthetics. "The nature of beauty," as Crispin Sartwell points out, "is one of the most enduring and controversial themes in Western philosophy, and is—with the nature of art—one of the two fundamental issues in... (shrink)

本书作者力图在社会与自然日益紧绷的张力之下,从中国传统的儒道禅到康德、杜夫海纳的思想资源中,为自然之美梳理出理论支撑。.

This research improves our understanding of entrepreneurial intention in the Chinese cultural context. Drawing on career construction theory, we received 408 valid surveys from rural Chinese dwellers and examined the relationships rural Chinese have among “face consciousness,” indecisiveness, career adaptability, and entrepreneurial intention. We found that those who are fearful of losing face are less likely to have entrepreneurial intentions, but one’s desire to gain face has no significant direct impact on entrepreneurial intention. In addition, face consciousness and an indecisive (...) personality interact to influence career adaptability and, in turn, entrepreneurial intention. In sum, this study supports the career construction perspective on understanding the formation of entrepreneurial intention and offers theoretical, practical, and policy implications for entrepreneurial career counseling and training. (shrink)

This research tests a model of employee helping behavior (a component of Organizational Citizenship Behavior, OCB) that involves a direct path (Intrinsic Motives → Helping Behavior, the Good Samaritan Effect) and an indirect path (the Love of Money → Extrinsic Motives → Helping Behavior). Results for the full sample supported the Good Samaritan Effect. Further, the love of money was positively related to extrinsic motives that were negatively related with helping behavior. We tested the model across four cultures (the USA., (...) Taiwan, Poland, and Egypt). The Good Samaritan Effect was significant for all four countries. For the indirect path, the first part was significant for all countries, except Egypt, whereas the second part was significant for Poland only. For Poland, the indirect path was significant and positive. The love of money may cause one to help in one culture (Poland) but not to help in others. Results were discussed in the light of ethical decision making. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

Research on unethical pro-organizational behavior has predominantly focused on its antecedents, while overlooking how engaging in such behavior might affect employees’ psychological experience and their downstream work behaviors. Integrating cognitive dissonance theory with the moral identity literature, we argue that engaging in UPB restricts moral identity internalization as a result of attempts to alleviate the cognitive dissonance about moral self-regard, which in turn translates into decreased organizational citizenship behavior and increased counterproductive workplace behavior. Moreover, employees’ construal level weakens these indirect (...) effects by alleviating the negative effect of engaging in UPB on moral identity internalization. The results from one experimental study and one multi-wave, multisource field study provide support for these predictions. Our research extends knowledge on the negative consequences of UPB for actors and organizations. (shrink)

This paper considers the ethical implications of applying three major ethical theories to the memory structure of an artificial companion that might have different embodiments such as a physical robot or a graphical character on a hand-held device. We start by proposing an ethical memory model and then make use of an action-centric framework to evaluate its ethical implications. The case that we discuss is that of digital artefacts that autonomously record and store user data, where this data are used (...) as a resource for future interaction with users. (shrink)

Learning disabilities are highly prevalent on college campuses, yet students with learning disabilities graduate at lower rates than those without disabilities. Academic and psychosocial supports are essential for overcoming challenges and for improving postsecondary educational opportunities for students with learning disabilities. A holistic, multi-level model of campus-based supports was established to facilitate culture and practice changes at the institutional level, while concurrently bolstering mentors’ abilities to provide learning disability-knowledgeable support, and simultaneously creating opportunities for students’ personal and interpersonal development. Mixed (...) methods were used to investigate implementation of coordinated personal, interpersonal, and institutional level supports for undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students with learning disabilities. A one-group pre-test post-test strategy was used to examine undergraduate outcomes. Participants included 52 STEM undergraduates with learning disabilities, 57 STEM graduate student mentors, 34 STEM faculty mentors, and 34 university administrators and personnel as members of a university-wide council. Enrolled for two years, undergraduates were engaged in group meetings involving psychoeducation and reflective discussions, development of self-advocacy projects, and individual mentorship. Undergraduates reported improved self efficacy (p =.001), campus connection (p <.001), professional development (p ≤.002), and self advocacy (p <.001) after two academic years. Graduate student mentors increased their understanding about learning disabilities and used their understanding to support both their mentees and other students they worked with. Council members identified and created opportunities for delivering learning disability-related trainings to faculty, mentors and advisors on campus, and for enhancing coordination of student services related to learning and related disorders. Disability-focused activities became integrated in broader campus activities regarding diversity. This research explicates a role that college campuses can play in fostering the wellbeing and the academic and career development of its students with developmental learning and related disorders. It offers an empirically tested campus-based model that is multilevel, holistic, and strengths-based for supporting positive outcomes of young people with learning disabilities in STEM. Moreover, findings advance the knowledge of supports and skills that are important for self-regulating and navigating complex and multi-faceted disability-related challenges within both the post-secondary educational environment and the young adults’ sociocultural context. (shrink)

This study proposes a research model based on social identity theory, which examines the moderating role of organizational trust on the relationship between corporate citizenship and organizational commitment. In the model, organizational commitment is positively influenced by organizational trust and four dimensions of perceived corporate citizenship, including economic, legal, ethical and discretionary citizenship. The model paths are hypothesized to be moderated by organizational trust. Empirical testing using a survey of personnel from 12 large firms confirms most of our hypothesized effects. (...) Theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

This study proposes a research model based on social identity theory, which examines the moderating role of organizational trust on the relationship between corporate citizenship and organizational commitment. In the model, organizational commitment is positively influenced by organizational trust and four dimensions of perceived corporate citizenship, including economic, legal, ethical and discretionary citizenship. The model paths are hypothesized to be moderated by organizational trust. Empirical testing using a survey of personnel from 12 large firms confirms most of our hypothesized effects. (...) Theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

Due to the limited work safety resources and the poor awareness of work safety from business owners with absolute decision-making power, safety accidents frequently occur in Chinese micro and small enterprises in high-risk industries. This study identifies the influencing factors of work safety behavior from MSEs, government safety supervision departments, and work safety service agencies. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the mechanism model of work safety behavior is built from the aspects of behavior attitude, subjective norms, behavior control (...) cognition, past behaviors, and risk awareness of the enterprise. Based on the interview with nearly 600 MSEs in the east of China over 6 months, the results show that the work safety awareness of the business owner determines the work safety lever of the enterprise, and the work safety behavior of MSEs is a passive restraint behavior. Our findings provide a new perspective on the formation of MSEs’ work safety behavior in high-risk industries. (shrink)

Obstetric ultrasound is the well-recognized prenatal test used to visualize and determine the condition of a pregnant woman and her fetus. Apart from the clinical application, some businesses have started promoting the use of fetal ultrasound machines for nonmedical reasons. Non-medical fetal ultrasound (also known as ‘keepsake’ ultrasound) is defined as using ultrasound to view, take a picture, or determine the sex of a fetus without a medical indication. Notwithstanding the guidelines and warnings regarding ultrasound safety issued by governments and (...) professional bodies, the absence of scientifically proven physical harm to fetuses from this procedure seems to provide these businesses with grounds for rapid expansion. However, this argument is too simplistic because current epidemiological evidence is not synchronous with advancing ultrasound technology. As non-medical fetal ultrasound has aroused very significant public attention, a thorough ethical analysis of this topic is essential. Using a multifaceted approach, we analyse the ethical perspective of non-medical fetal ultrasound in terms of the expectant mother, the fetus and health professionals. After applying four major theories of ethics and principles (the precautionary principle; theories of consequentialism and impartiality; duty-based theory; and rights-based theories), we conclude that obstetric ultrasound practice is ethically justifiable only if the indication for its use is based on medical evidence. Non-medical fetal ultrasound can be considered ethically unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the ethical analysis of this issue is time dependent owing to rapid advancements in ultrasound technology and the safety issue. The role of health professionals in ensuring that obstetric ultrasound is an ethically justifiable practice is also discussed. (shrink)

Objective: Pulmonary complications could badly affect the recovery of neurological function and neurological prognosis of neurological critically ill patients. This study evaluated the effect of high-flow nasal cannula therapy on decreasing pulmonary complications in neurologically critically ill patients.Patients and Methods: The patients admitted to the intensive care unit with serious neurological disease and receiving oxygen therapy were retrospectively reviewed. Patients were divided into the HFNC group and the conventional oxygen therapy group. We analyzed the data within these two groups, including (...) patients’ baseline data, short-term outcomes of respiratory complications, general outcomes including hospital stay, ICU stay and mortality, and neurological functions. To analyze the relevant factors, we performed multivariable logistic regression analysis.Results: A total of 283 patients met the criteria, including 164 cases in the HFNC group and 119 cases in the COT group. The HFNC group had remarkably less mechanical ventilation requirement with lower phlegm viscosity. Even more, ICU stay and total hospital stay were significantly shortened in the HNFC group.Conclusion: HFNC decreased pulmonary complications in neurologically critically ill patients and improved recovery of neurological function and neurological prognosis. (shrink)

A survey was conducted on the advertising practitioners in Taiwan concerning their experiences of ethical challenges at work. Among 120 respondents, while 32.5 percent responded that ethical problems did not exist, 67.5 percent admitted that ethical problem was a commonplace at work. According to these respondents, the most frequently mentioned ethical problems area representing unethical products or services, the message of advertisements, agency-client relationship, the creditability of research, undertable rebate, and the quality of service. Suggestions for international advertising managers were (...) also provided by comparing the finding from the present study with earlier studies in the United States. However, due to its preliminary nature, the present study should be considered exploratory and descriptive rather than conclusive, with the hope to inspire more research on advertising ethics in Taiwan as well as in other countries in the world. (shrink)

Denton and Hockx present thirteen essays treating a variety of literary organizations from China's Republican era . Interdisciplinary in approach, the essays are primarily concerned with describing and analyzing the social and cultural complexity of literary groupings and the role of these social formations in literary production of the period.

Presently, the State Grid Corporation of China has accumulated a large amount of maintenance records for power primary equipment. Unfortunately, most of these records are unstructured data which lead to difficultly analyze and utilize them. The emergence of natural language processing technology and deep learning methods provide a solution for unstructured text data. This paper proposes a progressive multitype feature fusion model to recognize Chinese named entity of unstructured maintenance records for power primary equipment. Firstly, the textual characteristics and word (...) separation difficulties of maintenance records are analyzed, then 7 main entity categories of power technical terms from unstructured maintenance records are chosen, and 3452 maintenance records are labeled by these categories, which is so called EPE-MR training dataset. Secondly, the standard test reports, standard maintenance, and fault analysis reports for three types of power primary equipment are employed as corpus to train character embedding in order to obtain certain words representation ability of maintenance records. After that, progressive multilevel radicals feature extraction module is designed to get detailed and fine semantic information in a hierarchical manner. Further, radicals feature representation and character embedding are concatenated and sent to BiLSTM module to extract contextual information in order to improve Chinese entity recognition ability. Moreover, CRF is introduced to handle the dependencies among prediction labels and to output the optimal prediction sequence, which can easily obtain structured data of maintenance records. Finally, comparative experiments on public MSRA dataset, China People’s Daily corpus, and EPE-MR dataset are implemented, respectively, which show the effectiveness of the proposed method. (shrink)

Based on the concept of “passengers self-help hubbing,” we build a flight schedule optimization model where maximizing the number of feasible flight connections, indicating transfer opportunities, as one objective and minimizing total slot displacements as the other objective. At the same time, the “Demand Smoothing Model” is introduced into the flight schedule optimization model to reduce the queuing delays for arrival and departure flights. We take into account all aircraft itineraries, the difficulty level of schedule coordination, and the maximum displacement (...) of any single flight acceptable to airlines when optimizing flight schedule. Given an original schedule, the model produces a feasible modified schedule that obeys the slot limits specified for an airport without canceling any flights, increases transfer opportunities, and improves on-time performance for hub airports while reducing interference with airline scheduling preferences. The model was verified with the operating data of the Urumqi international airport, and the results show that minor adjustments to flight schedules can increase the transfer opportunities of the airport and significantly reduce flight queuing delays. (shrink)

Video surveillance plays a vital role in maintaining the social security although, until now, large uncertainty still exists in danger understanding and recognition, which can be partly attributed to intractable environment changes in the backgrounds. This article presents a brain-inspired computing of attention value of surrounding environment changes with a processes-based cognition model by introducing a ratio valueλof EC-implications within considered periods. Theoretical models for computation of warning level of EC-implications to the universal video recognition efficiency are further established. Imbedding (...) proposed models into the online algorithms is suggested as a future research priority towards precision security for critical applications and, furthermore, schemes for a practical implementation of such integration are also preliminarily discussed. (shrink)

Color coding is used to guide attention in computer displays for such critical tasks as baggage screening or air traffic control. It has been shown that a display object attracts more attention if its color is more similar to the color for which one is searching. However, what does similar precisely mean? Can we predict the amount of attention that a display color will receive during a search for a given target color? To tackle this question, two color‐search experiments measuring (...) the selectivity of saccadic eye movements and mapping out its underlying color space were conducted. A variety of mathematical models, predicting saccadic selectivity for given target and display colors, were devised and evaluated. The results suggest that applying a Gaussian function to a weighted Euclidean distance in a slightly modified HSI color space is the best predictor of saccadic selectivity in the chosen paradigm. Hue and intensity information by itself provides a basis for useful predictors, spanning a possibly spherical color space of saccadic selectivity. Although the current models cannot predict saccadic selectivity values for a wide variety of visual search tasks, they reveal some characteristics of color search that are of both theoretical and applied interest, such as for the design of human–computer interfaces. (shrink)

As heritage is the precious treasure of human society, heritage also carries the genes of culture. It is of vital importance to effectively develop heritage tourism resources and explore the mechanisms that influence tourists’ cultural identity. This study has integrated the stimulus-organism-response framework with the attitude-behavior-context theory to construct a hypothetical model of heritage tourism aesthetics, tourist involvement, mental experience, and cultural identity so as to figure out their relationships. The questionnaires were collected to investigate the impact paths and mechanisms (...) between heritage aesthetics, tourist involvement, mental experience, and cultural identity. The structural equation model was used to examine the relationship between heritage tourism aesthetics, tourist involvement, mental experience, and cultural identity. The main findings include: the positive impact of aesthetics driving mental experience and cultural identity is significant; the impact of tourist involvement on mental experience and cultural identity is also significant; the impact of aesthetics on cultural identity is not significant, but mental experience mediates the relationship between aesthetics and cultural identity in heritage tourism. This study provides a new research framework and perspective for the aesthetics, tourist involvement, mental experience, and cultural identity of tourists in heritage tourism. This study also provides practical implications for government culture sectors to propagandize culture and for heritage destination managers to better manage heritage sites. (shrink)

The extant pieces of literature on discretion has mainly focused on its effect on policy implementation and public service delivery, but few studies have looked at its influence on street-level bureaucrats' work behavior, such as taking charge behavior, which is of great importance for government reforms, especially in developing and transitional countries. Based on the self-determination theory, this study examines whether and how discretion promotes street-level bureaucrats' TCB. Two studies were conducted among street-level bureaucrats in China. First, a survey experiment (...) suggests that discretion positively predicts street-level bureaucrats' TCB. Then, a survey questionnaire study shows that discretion is positively related to TCB through the mediator of public service motivation. We concluded with implications for theory and practice. (shrink)