ObjectiveThe goal of the study was to explore the relationship between parent–children relationships related to using the internet among kids and potentially associated factors.Materials and MethodsA sample of 1.216 Vietnamese students between the ages of 12 and 18 agreed to participate in the cross-sectional online survey. Data collected included socioeconomic characteristics and internet use status of participants, their perceived changes in relationship and communication between parents and children since using the internet, and parental control toward the child’s internet use. An (...) Ordered Logistic Regression was carried out to determine factors associated with parent–children relationship since using the internet.ResultsThe characteristics of the relationship between children and their parents since using the Internet were divided into three levels: deterioration, stability, and improvement. The topics that children most often communicate with their parents include learning, housework, and future directions. Two-way interactive activities, such as supporting parents to use the Internet, have a positive impact on the parent–child relationship. Stubborn parental control, such as establishing rules about contact or allowing Internet access and setting up global positioning system to track negatively affecting parent–child relationships.ConclusionFindings indicated that changes in the quality of the parent–child relationship were self-assessed by participants regard to kids’ internet use, especially in the COVID-19 epidemic context. Educational campaigns and programs to raise awareness of parents as to the dangers and negative influences that their children may encounter online, psychology of children’s behaviors and effects of different responding strategies are recommended. (shrink)

Background: This study examined the cyberbullying experience and coping manners of adolescents in urban Vietnam and explored the mediating effect of different support to the associations between cyberbullying and mental health issues.Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on 484 students at four secondary schools. Cyberbullying experience, coping strategies, psychological problems, and family, peer, and teacher support were obtained. Structural equation modeling was utilized to determine the mediating effects of different support on associations between cyberbullying and psychological problems.Results: There were 11.6 (...) and 28.3% of students who reported that they experienced and observed at least one cyberbullying act in the last 3 months, respectively. Among the victims, only 48.2% tried to stop the perpetrators. Meanwhile, the majority of observers belonged to the “Intervene” group who tried to report cyberbullying acts or help victims. Family support was found to partially mediate associations between cyberbullying experience and observation with levels of psychological problems among adolescents.Conclusion: The 3-month rate of cyberbullying experience and observation among urban adolescents aged 11–14 was low. However, current coping strategies against cyberbullying were not sufficient. Family support is an important factor that should be considered for designing interventions to mitigating the impacts of cyberbullying on the mental health of adolescents. (shrink)

Using a nationwide survey of provincial institutional quality and a sample of private manufacturing small and medium scale enterprises, this paper contributes to the literature by considering for the first time the effects of corruption on the financial performance of Vietnamese private SMEs. Interestingly, contrary to previous findings, we find that corruption when measured by a dummy variable, does not affect firms’ financial performance after controlling for heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity. However, the intensity of bribery and the majority of (...) the forms of corruption were found to have negative impacts on firms’ financial performance. Hence, a typical approach using only a dummy variable for bribery might not adequately evaluate the impact of bribe intensity or even ignores the negative impacts of some types of bribes on firms’ financial performance. The findings suggest that anti-corruption measures are vital for the development of the Vietnamese private SMEs. (shrink)

IntroductionThis study aimed to explore the mental wellbeing profiles and their related factors among urban young adults in Vietnam.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam. There were 356 Vietnamese who completed the Mental Health Inventory-5 questionnaire. The Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify the subgroups of mental wellbeing through five items of the MHI-5 scale as the continuous variable. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine factors related to subgroups.ResultsThree classes represented three levels (...) of MHI-5 score, which included “Poor mental health,” “Fair mental health,” and “Good mental health,” were, respectively, 14.3, 46.6, and 39.0%. Compared to a low household economy, participants with an average household economy had 2.11 and 4.79 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to fair and poor mental health classes. Respondents with more than two acute symptoms had 3.85 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to a poor mental health class, as compared to those without acute symptoms. Regarding the measurement of the Perceived Social Support Scale, people having support from their family had 1.80 and 2.23 times higher odds of being in classes of fair and good mental health relative to the poor mental health class; and participants having friend support also had 1.87 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class compared with the fair mental health class, as the MSPSS score increased by 1 unit. People with Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale increased by 1 score, those who had 1.17, 1.26, and 1.47 times higher odds of being in a good compared to fair mental health class, fair compared to poor mental health class, and good compared to poor mental health class, respectively.ConclusionOur findings were given to promote a new classification method for mental health screening among the general population. The current findings could be used as evidence to develop policies and plans that focus on encouraging early screening for mental health problems among the general young population in the future. (shrink)

This analysis used data, primarily from the 1997 Vietnamese Demographic and Health Survey (VN-DHS 1997), to determine the changes in contraceptive use in Vietnam. A descriptive analysis of individual, household and community characteristics was made to obtain a general description of contraceptive use. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were also performed on the currently married in (a) a sample of all women and (b) only those women who live in rural areas, to identify the strength of association that each variable has (...) with the use of modern contraceptives. The use of any contraceptive method and the use of modern methods increased from 1988 to 1997. The primary contraceptive method utilized is the IUD and its use has increased substantially from 1988 to 1997. Younger women (aged 15–24) were less likely to use any contraceptive method. Women not desiring additional children were significantly more likely to use contraceptive methods than those desiring more children. Education has a clear impact on both contraceptive knowledge and use by women, with higher educated women being more likely to use a contraceptive method. Illiterate women with no formal education were significantly less likely to use modern methods of contraception. Differentials in contraceptive use exist regarding place of residence. Urban women are more likely than rural women to use contraception, but the difference is not large. Women living in mountainous areas are less likely to use contraception, compared with women living in the lowlands. Living standards, especially the availability of electricity in the community, have a large effect on the methods of contraception adopted by women. Religion is not strongly related to the contraceptive behaviour of women. There were significant differences in the use of contraceptives in communities with good quality of care, with increased contraceptive use corresponding to the increase in availability of family planning workers at communes, provision of counselling services at health facilities, and the volume of mass media family planning messages. (shrink)

Using a nationwide survey of provincial institutional quality and a sample of private manufacturing small and medium scale enterprises, this paper contributes to the literature by considering for the first time the effects of corruption on the financial performance of Vietnamese private SMEs. Interestingly, contrary to previous findings, we find that corruption when measured by a dummy variable, does not affect firms’ financial performance after controlling for heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity. However, the intensity of bribery and the majority of (...) the forms of corruption were found to have negative impacts on firms’ financial performance. Hence, a typical approach using only a dummy variable for bribery might not adequately evaluate the impact of bribe intensity or even ignores the negative impacts of some types of bribes on firms’ financial performance. The findings suggest that anti-corruption measures are vital for the development of the Vietnamese private SMEs. (shrink)

Cảm xúc là yếu tố cơ bản thúc đẩy con người đưa ra quyết định và xử lý thông tin. Sợ hãi là một trong những cảm xúc phổ biến nhất ảnh hưởng đến hành vi của nhà đầu tư cá nhân trên thị trường chứng khoán. Mặc dù nhiều nghiên cứu đã được thực hiện để khám phá tác động của nỗi sợ hãi đối với hiệu quả đầu tư và hành vi giao dịch của nhà đầu tư cá (...) nhân, nhưng vẫn còn rất ít thông tin về các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến nỗi sợ hãi của nhà đầu tư cá nhân trong thời kỳ thị trường sụt giảm (hoặc những giai đoạn cực kỳ biến động). Vì thế, nghiên cứu này được thực hiện để tìm hiểu liệu các nguồn thông tin ảnh hưởng đến quyết định đầu tư của nhà đầu tư có ảnh hưởng đến sự sợ hãi của họ khi khủng hoảng xảy ra hay không. Nghiên cứu đã sử dụng phương pháp phân tích Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) trên bộ dữ liệu từ 1526 nhà đầu tư Trung Quốc và Việt Nam. Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra rằng các nhà đầu tư tiếp cận các loại thông tin khác nhau khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư sẽ ảnh hưởng đến tần suất phản ứng sợ hãi khác nhau. Cụ thể, các nhà đầu tư tham khảo thông tin từ chuyên gia hoặc tự phân tích khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư ít bị đóng băng (biểu hiện của tâm lý sợ hãi) hơn trong thời kỳ thị trường sụt giảm. Ngược lại, những người đưa ra quyết định đầu tư dựa trên thông tin từ người quen hay bạn bè và trực giác sẽ bị đóng băng thường xuyên hơn. Kết quả nghiên cứu này giúp gợi ý nhà đầu tư cá nhân nên trang bị cho mình các kiến thức về tài chính cũng như tham khảo các ý kiến chuyên gia trên thị trường, hoặc những nguồn thông tin đáng tin cậy, khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư. Bên cạnh đó, cơ quan quản lý thị trường cần có hoạt động phổ cập kiến thức về thị trường chứng khoán, hạn chế ảnh hưởng của các kênh thông tin không chính thống, và khuyến khích nhà đầu tư ít kinh nghiệm mua chứng chỉ quỹ của các quỹ đầu tư. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu này được thực hiện để tìm hiểu liệu các nguồn thông tin ảnh hưởng đến quyết định đầu tư của nhà đầu tư có ảnh hưởng đến sự sợ hãi của họ khi khủng hoảng xảy ra hay không? Nghiên cứu đã sử dụng phương pháp phân tích Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) trên bộ dữ liệu từ 1,526 nhà đầu tư Trung Quốc và Việt Nam. Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra rằng, các nhà đầu tư tiếp cận (...) các loại thông tin khác nhau khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư sẽ ảnh hưởng đến tần suất phản ứng sợ hãi khác nhau. Cụ thể, các nhà đầu tư tham khảo thông tin từ chuyên gia hoặc tự phân tích khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư ít bị đóng băng (biểu hiện của tâm lý sợ hãi) hơn trong thời kỳ thị trường sụt giảm. Ngược lại, những người đưa ra quyết định đầu tư dựa trên thông tin từ người quen hay bạn bè và trực giác sẽ bị đóng băng thường xuyên hơn. -/- [English Abstract] This study was conducted to explore whether the sources of information priority during decision-making contribute to their fear reactions during crises. The research utilized the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on data collected from 1,526 investors in China and Vietnam. The study results indicated that investors prioritizing different types of information when making investment decisions would have different frequency of fear reactions. Specifically, investors who prioritized information from experts or conducted self-analysis when making investment decisions experienced less freezing (an expression of psychological fear) during market downturns. Conversely, those who based their investment decisions on information from acquaintances, friends, and intuition tended to experience freezing more frequently. (shrink)

Case law retrieval is the task of locating truly relevant legal cases given an input query case. Unlike information retrieval for general texts, this task is more complex with two phases (legal case retrieval and legal case entailment) and much harder due to a number of reasons. First, both the query and candidate cases are long documents consisting of several paragraphs. This makes it difficult to model with representation learning that usually has restriction on input length. Second, the concept of (...) relevancy in this domain is defined based on the legal relation that goes beyond the lexical or topical relevance. This is a real challenge because normal text matching will not work. Third, building a large and accurate legal case dataset requires a lot of effort and expertise. This is obviously an obstacle to creating enough data for training deep retrieval models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called supporting model that can deal with both phases. The underlying idea is the case–case supporting relation and the paragraph–paragraph as well as the decision-paragraph matching strategy. In addition, we propose a method to automatically create a large weak-labeling dataset to overcome the lack of data. The experiments showed that our solution has achieved the state-of-the-art results for both case retrieval and case entailment phases. (shrink)

Working in academia is challenging, even more so for those with limited resources and opportunities. Researchers around the world do not have equal working conditions. The paper presents the structure, operation method, and conceptual framework of the SM3D Portal's community coaching method, which is built to help Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and researchers in low-resource settings overcome the obstacle of inequality and start their career progress. The community coaching method is envisioned by three science philosophies (cost-effectiveness, transparency spirit, and proactive (...) attitude) and established and operated based on the Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D knowledge (SM3D) management framework (i.e., mindsponge thinking and Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics serve as the coaching program's foundational theory and analytical tools). The coaching method also embraces Open Science's values for lowering the cost of doing science and encouraging the trainees to be transparent, which is expected to facilitate the self-correcting mechanism of science through open data, open review, and open dialogue. Throughout the training process, members are central beneficiaries by gaining research knowledge and skills, acquiring publication as the training's product, and shifting their mindsets from “I can't do it” to “I can do it,” and at the same time transforming a mentee to be ready for a future mentor's role. The coaching method is thus one of the members, for the member, by the members. -/- • The paper provides the structure, operation method, and conceptual framework of the SM3D Portal's community coaching method, which is built to help Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and researchers in low-resource settings overcome the obstacle of inequality and start their career progress. • The paper presents three major science philosophies envisioning the establishment and operation of scholarly community coaching. • The paper employs the mindsponge theory and BMF analytics to construct a conceptual framework explaining how an environment is created to help shift members’ mindsets from “I can't do it” to “I can do it.”. (shrink)

Structure and organization seems to be at the root of many of the questions raised about institutional behaviour; however, with respect to research on university capacity building, few studies have examined research organizational problems, particularly in developing countries. This study investigates academic reactions to the structure and organization of research at four leading Vietnamese universities. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 55 participants, the study finds that the four case-study Vietnamese universities have accomplished a number of the more visible (...) tasks of research management such as creating research and research management positions; deciding primary organizational units for research delivery; creating a research office; and creating research oversight committees. However, they seem to neglect the other less visible tasks of organizing and structuring research such as developing rules for research integrity; developing a mechanism for evaluating the quality of research outcomes; preparing researchers and research managers for the necessary skills and knowledge; and deciding vertical and horizontal decentralization. The study concludes that even though research has been formally structured and organized, the management of research has not yet been professionalized. The key problem in organizing and structuring research is the lack of an effective system for research behaviour formalization. A more effective system for better formalizing research behaviours should be developed so that Vietnamese universities can integrate more successfully into the global research. (shrink)

In the university system today, co-research may be a decolonising strategy. We evaluate teaching a ‘Modernization and Social Change’ course in Vietnam as an experiment in co-research anthropology t...

*Editorial Note: This column reprints the Book Review on Amazon with permission from Dr. Giang Hoang, Monash University, Australia. It has been slightly edited for house-style presentation.

In this third paper in a series of four, we explore some ways of doing education differently. An education that moves beyond the persistent failures and irredeemable injustices of modern mass schooling episteme. The episteme for education we adumbrate – an episteme of life continuance – begins with a recognition of interdependency and the value of diversity, diverse knowledges and relations of tolerance. We propose an escape from the extinction ethics which modern schools perpetuate and a new grammar of living (...) in which education and politics are processes of re-learning, co-learning, decision taking, limit testing, and conflict resolution in relation to an uncertain future. To achieve this, we outline a set of open and ‘unplanned’ commoning activities that would take place within local social infrastructures focused on re-politising learning itself and practicing the care of oneself, others, community and the environment. The proposal for a different education as common(ing) activities undertaken within social infrastructures, is about reimagining political and environmental relations, and co-creating a sense of collective ownership of and responsibility for the environment. A form of community that it is practical, rather than utopian, and that would be both the means and ends for such an education. (shrink)

In this article, I revisit Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and contrast it with Herbert Simon's notion of bounded rationality. Through a discussion of the literature of economic sociology on status and Fligstein's political-cultural approach, I argue that this concept can be a source of fresh insights into empirical problems. I find that the greater the change in the social environment, the more salient the benefits of using habitus as a tool to analyze agents' behavior.

Costly scientific work and its publication and declining funding rates worldwide make it not easily affordable for scientists, especially those from low-resource contexts.

Coastal protection is crucial to human development since the ocean has many values associated with the economy, ecosystem, and culture. However, most ocean protecting efforts are currently ineffective due to the burdens of finance, lack of appropriate management, and international cooperation regimes. For aiding bottom-up initiatives for ocean protection support, this study employed the Mindsponge Theory to examine how the public’s perceived economic and cultural values influence their willingness to support actions to protect the ocean. Analyzing the European-Union-Horizon-2020-funded dataset of (...) 709 respondents from 42 countries, we discovered that perceived economic values have negative effects on the tendency of ocean protection supports (i.e., food, transportation, renewable energy, oil and gas, and recreation). In contrast, certain perceived cultural values can help increase the willingness to do so (i.e., mental well-being and sense of identity). However, the effects of perceived cultural values are only moderately reliable. These findings suggest that designing cultural information delivery campaigns can help promote coastal reserve supports, such as fundraisings and preserving the oceans from the community. (shrink)

This series of short essays aims to describe several conspicuous and well-known examples of such networks, ranging from the Japanese financial keiretsu to the bamboo network in Southeast Asia, from the four big families of Hongkong to more than 5.2 million household-based businesses in Vietnam.

With the threats from Fintech firms and regulators, would banks ever be dethroned from the crown? The answer to this question yet remains to be examined.

Over the last several decades, scholars and practitioners have progressively acknowledged that we cannot consider cities as the place where nature stops anymore, resulting in urban environments being increasingly appreciated and theorized as hybrids between nature and culture, entities made of socio-ecological processes in constant transformation. Spanning the fields of political ecology, environmental studies, and sociology, this new direction in urban theory emerged in concert with global concern for sustainability and environmental justice. This volume explores the notion that connecting with (...) nature holds the key to a more progressive and liberatory politics. (shrink)

In the near future, vehicles will gradually gain more autonomous functionalities. Drivers’ activity will be less about driving than about monitoring intelligent systems to which driving action will be delegated. Road safety, therefore, remains dependent on the human factor and we should identify the limits beyond which driver’s functional state (DFS) may no longer be able to ensure safety. Depending on the level of automation, estimating the DFS may have different targets, e.g. assessing driver’s situation awareness in lower levels of (...) automation and his ability to respond to emerging hazard or assessing driver’s ability to monitor the vehicle performing operational tasks in higher levels of automation. Unfitted DFS (e.g., drowsiness) may impact the driver ability respond to taking over abilities. This paper reviews the most appropriate psychophysiological indices in naturalistic driving while considering the DFS through exogenous sensors, providing the more efficient trade-off between reliability and intrusiveness. The DFS also originates from kinematic data of the vehicle, thus providing information that indirectly relates to drivers behaviour. The whole data should be synchronously processed, providing a diagnosis on the DFS, and bringing it to the attention of the decision maker in real time. Next, making the information available can be permanent or intermittent (or even undelivered), and may also depend on the automation level. Such interface can include recommendations for decision support or simply give neutral instruction. Mapping of relevant psychophysiological and behavioural indicators for DFS will enable practitioners and researchers provide reliable estimates, fitted to the level of automation. (shrink)

Confronted with problems or situations that do not yield toknown theories and world views, scientists and students are alike. Theyare rarely able to directly build a model or a theory thereof. Rather,they must find ways to make sense of the circumstances using theircurrent knowledge and adjusting what is recognized in the process. Thisway of thinking, using past ways of perceiving the physical world tobuild new ones does not follow a logical path and cannot be described astheory revision. Likewise, in many (...) situations it is awkward, indeedoften impossible, to resort to analogical reasoning to account for it.This paper presents a new mechanism, called `tunnel effect', that mayexplain, in part, how scientists and students reason while constructinga new conceptual domain. `Tunnel effect' is also contrasted withanalogical reasoning. (shrink)

Studying the psychology behind the purchase of eco-friendly products and second-hand items can offer valuable insights to promote sustainable consumer behavior. This paper examines factors influencing Italian consumers’ willingness to pay regarding bio-based clothing and second-hand items. Drawing from data collected from 402 Italian participants, we examine how motivations and socio-demographic factors are associated with willingness to pay in the context of sustainable fashion. Our findings reveal that motivations related to environmental concerns are positively associated with consumers’ willingness to pay (...) higher premiums for bio-based clothing. Higher income and education levels are also associated with the willingness to pay higher premiums. Meanwhile, motivation related to vintage appeal is associated with lower desired discounts for second-hand items, particularly among older consumers. Gender differences also influence discount preferences, with men seeking larger discounts on second-hand clothing compared to women. By providing insights into Italian consumers’ sustainable fashion choices, this study offers implications for businesses, policymakers, and researchers aiming to promote eco-conscious consumption and sustainability in the fashion industry. (shrink)

Highlights: -/- • -/- Proposes forward-looking approach to studying climate collapse risks. • -/- Suggests diminishing returns on climate adaptation as a collapse mechanism. • -/- Suggests strategies for sustainable adaptation pathways in face of climate change. • -/- Illustrates analysis with examples of small island states and global food security. -/- Abstract: -/- This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and (...) suggest strategies for adapting to them. Our approach is based on three postulates that facilitate a forward-looking approach: (1) collapse, if it occurred, would be a lengthy process rather than an abrupt event; (2) significant collapse risks already exist in some places; and (3) diminishing returns on adaptation to intensifying climate impacts are a key driver of collapse risks. The first two postulates suggests that collapse risks can be studied in process, while the third points to strategies for adaptation pathways that avoid unsustainable diminishing returns. Applying diminishing returns to climate change adaptation, rather than sociopolitical complexity or resource extraction, is also a novel theoretical contribution to collapse literature. [Open access]. (shrink)

This paper analyses the differing receptions of the Old French Partonopeus de Blois in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by revisiting a little known text, a peculiar prolongation in the form of an Art d'aimer which has been added to a versified French translation of the Disciplina clericalis. This continuation exists in only one manuscript; recent advances in technology and new research have allowed the author to determine that quite large parts of this Art d'aimer have been borrowed from Partonopeus. (...) He analyses these borrowings, reassesses the judgments of his predecessors, and concludes that Partonopeus de Blois might have had a much greater literary impact on the authors of other Old French texts than has previously been thought. (shrink)

Samuel Huntington's influential clash of civilizations hypothesis (Huntington, 1993; Huntington, 1996) has been widely debated, but empirical tests of his ideas about core states remain limited at the micro-level. In this paper, we bring new evidence to bear, focusing on the : Greater Asia and the Pacific. Using the AsiaBarometer, we examine the extent to which publics in the region identify with the core states of the supposedly most contentious civilizations in the region and the factors that influence those perceptions. (...) We give attention to the role of globalization and nationalism and whether both may be subsumed by religiosity as Huntington suggests. Our descriptive evidence affirms some of the tensions between the US, China, and Islamic-predominant Asia identified by Huntington as areas of potential conflict. At the same time, we find no evidence to suggest that attitudes toward core states are zero-sum; Asian publics often see rival powers as mutually good influences. Using multivariate analysis, we find that religiosity, as the clash paradigm surmises, boosts Iranian influence and undermines American influence in several predominantly Islamic states. We also find, contrary to Huntington, that overall exposure to foreign cultures leads to a more positive assessment of American influence among Chinese and Pakistanis, as well as American perceptions of China. When foreign exposure influences perceptions of Iran, the effect is modestly, but consistently, negative. Taken together, the findings raise questions about two key assumptions of the Huntington framework and suggest that alternative approaches in recent civilizations literature show greater empirical promise. (shrink)

A new road map for design is emerging out of interdisciplinary research across biology and design. Whilst in the second part of the twentieth century, the emergence of the digital realm altered and radically challenged conventional design and manufacturing processes, the beginning of the twenty-first century marks a strong shift towards the amalgamation of the binary code with biological systems. With advances in synthetic biology, we can now ‘biofabricate’ like Nature does. By tinkering and altering the DNA code or the (...) environment of growth of living organisms, we can effectively ‘design’ and grow new biomaterials. The role of design is shifting from working with inanimate matter such as plastic and metals to making with animate living entities such as mycelium, yeast and bacteria. This paradigm shift promises to open up new possibilities for biofabricating future intelligent materials as well as for engaging with new sustainable processes. This paper examines strategies and tools for designing with living systems and proposes a framework for design to engage with our future bio-materiality. From biofabrication experiments to synthetic biology propositions, the paper will investigate a series of design artifacts that explores strategies such as co-designing with natural organisms or actuating a new synthetic nature and develop a critique of how biodesign can help shifting towards the crafting of a future sustainable intelligent bio-materiality. (shrink)

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (...) (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument. (shrink)

This paper argues that the principles of spiritual traditions provide normative ‘standards of goodness’ within which practitioners evaluate meaningful work. Our comparative study of practitioners in the Buddhist and Quaker traditions provide a fine-grained analysis to illuminate, that meaningfulness is deeply connected to particular tradition-specific philosophical and theological ideas. In the Buddhist tradition, meaningfulness is temporal and rooted in Buddhist principles of non-attachment, impermanence and depending-arising, whereas in the Quaker tradition, the Quaker testimonies and theological ideas frame meaningfulness as eternal. (...) Surprisingly, we find that when faced with unethical choices and clashes between organizational normativity and spiritual normativity, Buddhist practitioners acknowledge the temporal character of meaningfulness and compromise their moral values, whereas in contrast, Quaker practitioners morally disengage from meaningless work. Our study highlights how normative commitments in different spiritual traditions can influence different levels of adaptability in finding work meaningful and stresses the central importance of normative commitments in meaningful work. Our study concludes with practical implications and future pathways for inter-disciplinary research. (shrink)

Economists have suggested it was optimal to signal the odious character of bonds when they were issued. However, since the odious debt doctrine has not been recognized by any court, one could argue that denouncing odious debts is useless. Exploiting a unique historical episode, this paper quantifies the impact of protests on odious debts. In 1906, the Russian government floated a bond in Paris to cover the costs of its war against Japan but also to raise money to crush the (...) political movements wishing to reform Russia’s political system. Issued without parliamentary consent, this loan met with fierce opposition. Press campaigns in Great Britain, France and Germany denounced its odious character. If failure or success is determined solely by the ability to prevent a loan from being issued, then the campaign failed. We argue, however, that failure or success should be determined in light of the financial costs imposed on the issuer for future loans and even the ability to force a postponement of these loans. We show that these campaigns increased the yields of all Russian bonds traded in Paris, and thus Russia’s future borrowing cost. Yields on the 1906 loan, which was specially targeted by the campaigns, rose even more. However, once the press campaigns stopped, yields experienced a declining trend, highlighting the important role the press may have on odious debts. (shrink)

This study explores the role of an informal institution—engaged Buddhism—in leadership responses to issues of bribery at the firm level in the context of Vietnam. In-depth interviews were carried out in Vietnam with 26 organizational leaders who were Buddhist practitioners. The leaders expressed a Buddhist-enacted utilitarian approach based on three context-associated mechanisms: karmic consequences, community and social well-being, and total detachment. These mechanisms manifest in leadership approaches based on the Middle Way, Skillful Means, and Emptiness. They are involved in forming (...) leaders’ perceptions about bribery issues and their enacting of contextual approaches to balance organizational means and ends in tackling ethical issues associated with bribery. The study also sheds light on moral struggles involved in the process of shaping and enacting a Buddhist-enacted utilitarian approach. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

This paper investigates the alignment of business school curriculums with the Sustainable Development Goals, utilising a case study of Griffith Business School, Australia. The study utilises an audit of keywords to map content and concepts associated with the goals, targets and indicators of SDGs. The audit results revealed that although there was already considerable uptake of key SDGs concepts throughout the undergraduate programs, in particular Goal 16, there were some gaps. Feedback from teaching staff on the results was combined with (...) existing literature and industry/government approaches to offer considerations for future curriculum development that seeks to better integrate SDGs and sustainability. This work contributes to ongoing discussions about sustainability curriculum development and links previous research with the emerging SDG agenda in business schools. The practical nature of this research lends to direct transfer of method to other business schools who are wishing to map and develop their curriculum in relation to the SDGs. (shrink)

Authentic assessment has been proposed as having potential to enhance student learning for a changing world. Conventionally, assessment is seen to be authentic when the tasks are real-to-life or have real-life value. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s work, we challenge this conceptualisation as narrow and limited. We argue that authenticity need not be an attribute of tasks but, rather, is a quality of educational processes that engage students in becoming more fully human. Adopting the mode of authenticity involves calling things into (...) question, challenging public assumptions and striving to take a stand in the situations encountered. In addition to assessing student achievement, then, authentic assessment can enhance integration of what students know and how they act with who they are becoming. (shrink)

This paper draws on an institutional logics perspective to illuminate a hitherto underexplored context for CSR professional identity construction. It draws on an empirical study of 65 CSR professionals in South Korea and aims to deepen our understanding of CSR professional identity construction by investigating the contested nature of the CSR professional field between, on the one hand, societal-normative expectations of the profession, and, in the absence of stable professional logics, CSR professionals’ desired professional identity, on the other. Our study (...) reveals how CSR professionals engage with, and respond to, this complexity through constructing one of three distinctive professional identities based on different logic constellations. This process reveals a snapshot of professional logics ‘in-the-making’. (shrink)

Public good contributions have been an interest for many experimental economists, since evidence has shown that people do not always behave rationally and inefficient equilibria are not always realized. This research compares a public good game run in both China and Germany with three treatments in which the social distance factor varies. The outcome shows that under a condition of high social distance, Chinese and German behavior differs with German subjects contributing more to the public good. As social distance decreases, (...) both samples converge to insignificantly different averages of contribution. It is also found that people’s contribution is positively correlated with their guess and level of anonymity: the more their identity is exposed, the more they give and the more they believe the other is giving. (shrink)

The literature on meaningful work often highlights the role of leaders in creating a sense of meaning in the work or tasks that their staff or followers carry out. However, a fundamental question arises about whether or not leaders are morally responsible for providing meaningful work when perceptions of what is meaningful may differ between leaders and followers. Drawing on Buddhist ethics and interviews with thirty-eight leaders in Vietnam who practise ‘engaged Buddhism’ in their leadership, we explore how leaders understand (...) their roles in creating meaningfulness at work and their perceptions of how employees experience their leadership approach in this respect. On the basis of Buddhist ontology on the sense of meaningfulness, we introduce a number of leadership approaches in cultivating meaning at work that question the argument that leaders are primarily responsible for enabling or satisfying employees’ search for meaning. The study provides an alternative lens through which to examine the role of leadership from a Buddhist ethics perspective and shows how an insight from this particular tradition can enrich secular interpretations of meaningful work and leadership. (shrink)

In this chapter, we aimed at further characterizing the functional neuroanatomy of the human rapid eye movement (REM) sleep at the population level. We carried out a meta-analysis of a large dataset of positron emission tomography (PET) scans acquired during wakefulness, slow wave sleep and REM sleep, and focused especially on the brain areas in which the activity diminishes during REM sleep. Results show that quiescent regions are confined to the inferior and middle frontal cortex and to the inferior parietal (...) lobule. Providing a plausible explanation for some of the features of dream reports, these findings may help in refining the concepts, which try to account for human cognition during REM sleep. In particular, we discuss the significance of these results to explain the alteration in executive processes, episodic memory retrieval and self representation during REM sleep dreaming as well as the incorporation of external stimuli into the dream narrative. (shrink)

The present article develops a durkheimean interpretation of the division of social work as organic and contractual solidarity. This interpretation will be examined, on one hand, while it characterizes a kind of industrial society that exalts the solidarity of roles in the collective work but not in the modes of production; on the other hand, while it presupposes a State playing the role of catalyst of the corporations and does not let foresee a notion of contract.Neste artigo desenvolvemos a interpretação (...) durkheimeana da divisão do trabalho social como solidariedade orgânica e contratual. Examinamos alguns aspectos que essa análise nos apresenta, de um lado, pela caracterização de um tipo de sociedade industrial que enaltece a solidariedade das funções no trabalho coletivo e não nos modos de produção; e, de outro, pela pressuposição de um Estado como elemento catalizador das corporações e que não deixa de antever uma noção de contrato. (shrink)

Originally conceptualized by Bandura as the process of cognitive restructuring that allows individuals to disassociate with their internal moral standards and behave unethically without feeling distress, moral disengagement has attracted the attention of management researchers in recent years. An increasing body of research has examined the factors which lead people to morally disengage and its related outcomes in the workplace. However, the conceptualization of moral disengagement, how it should be measured, the manner in which it develops, and its influence on (...) work outcomes are areas of continued debate among researchers. In this article, we undertake a systematic review of research on moral disengagement in the workplace and develop a comprehensive research agenda that highlights opportunities for theoretical and empirical advancement of the literature. (shrink)

AimHealthcare workers have directly provided care for COVID-19 patients, and have faced many additional sources leading to poor mental health. The study aimed to investigate the mental health problems and related factors among healthcare staff in Vietnam.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional mixed methods study, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, was performed among 400 healthcare workers working at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases and Ninh Binh General Hospital from the first day of treatment for COVID-19 patients to May 01, 2020.ResultsThe results (...) showed that 8.0% of participants had stress, 17.5% of participants had anxiety, and 14.8% of participants had depression. Approximately 50% of participants reported that they had at least one of these symptoms. The findings illustrated that stress, anxiety, and depression were associated with the position in a hospital, health status during the COVID-19 pandemic, family members/relatives infected with COVID-19, physical and mental support from friends, family, and community, department, years of working, and the average work hours per day of healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19.ConclusionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers who worked in the hospital providing treatment and care for COVID-19 patients dealt with mental health problems such as stress, anxiety, and depression. It is necessary to promote mental health among healthcare workers, to contribute to the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam. (shrink)

Thử nhìn lại nguồn gốc và vai trò của đạo đức và pháp luật trong lịch sử phát triển xã hội -- Những đặc điểm của đạo đức và pháp luật trong triết lý phát triển của nền văn hóa truyền thống Việt Nam --Vấn đề đạo đức và pháp luật trong tư tưởng Hồ Chí Minh và trong thực tiễn xà hội ta từ Cách mạng tháng Tám 1945 -- Thực trạng đạo đức và việc thực thi pháp luật (...) trong xã hội ta ngày nay -- Vai trò của đạo đức và pháp luật trong sự nghiệp công nghiệp hóa, hiện đại hóa hiện nay ở Việt Nam. (shrink)

This study examines non-Western perceptions of inclusion and exclusion through an examination of right mindfulness practitioners in Vietnam. It contributes to the critical inclusion literature that problematizes inclusion by showing how right mindfulness practitioners rejected the concepts of inclusion and exclusion, and moreover, resisted attachments to feelings of inclusion or exclusion, treating both states as empty and non-enduring. Surprisingly, our study shows how inclusion can generate fear at fulfilling others’ collective expectations, whereas exclusion generated a sense of freedom arising from (...) a release from those expectations. Further, our study traces these counter-intuitive findings to right mindfulness practitioners’ moral reasoning based upon Buddhism’s canonical philosophical ideas. We conclude by highlighting the pressing need for critical perspectives and for further non-Western perspectives to inclusion that contribute to a body of cross-cultural work. (shrink)

Dream is a state of consciousness characterized by internally-generated sensory, cognitive and emotional experiences occurring during sleep. Dream reports tend to be particularly abundant, with complex, emotional, and perceptually vivid experiences after awakenings from rapid eye movement sleep. This is why our current knowledge of the cerebral correlates of dreaming, mainly derives from studies of REM sleep. Neuroimaging results show that REM sleep is characterized by a specific pattern of regional brain activity. We demonstrate that this heterogeneous distribution of brain (...) activity during sleep explains many typical features in dreams. Reciprocally, specific dream characteristics suggest the activation of selective brain regions during sleep. Such an integration of neuroimaging data of human sleep, mental imagery, and the content of dreams is critical for current models of dreaming; it also provides neurobiological support for an implication of sleep and dreaming in some important functions such as emotional regulation. (shrink)