Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)
A novel fuzzy control scheme with adaptation algorithms is developed for robot manipulators’ system. At the beginning, one adjustable parameter is introduced in the fuzzy logic system, the robot manipulators system with uncertain nonlinear terms as the master device and a reference model dynamic system as the slave robot system. To overcome the limitations such as online learning computation burden and logic structure in conventional fuzzy logic systems, a parameter should be used in fuzzy logic system, which composes fuzzy logic (...) system with updated parameter laws, and can be formed for a new fashioned adaptation algorithms controller. The error closed-loop dynamical system can be stabilized based on Lyapunov analysis, the number of online learning computation burdens can be reduced greatly, and the different kinds of fuzzy logic systems with fuzzy rules or without any fuzzy rules are also suited. Finally, effectiveness of the proposed approach has been shown in simulation example. (shrink)
A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land. During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British “speculative realist” philosophers who studied with him, and through the (...) many cultural producers—writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision. Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s—long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print)—in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids. Fanged Noumena gives a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and has introduced his unique voice to a new generation of readers. (shrink)
Human resource management is underpinned by, and contributes to, the business ethics of the organization. Opportunities available to men and women as managers, and the role of managers more broadly, are critical in shaping business ethics in contemporary organizations. Research on women in management therefore provides an important lens through which to understand the institutional and cultural context of HR ethics as part of the business ethics of a country. To date, women in management in China remains an under-charted topic (...) of research in the HRM field. Extant research and recommendations on the improvement of the position of women in management in China focus primarily on women themselves from a traditional, gender norm angle, instead of challenging the political and patriarchal system or any institutionalized discriminatory practice. This is, in part, due to the absence in China of a critical feminism approach or feminist movement, as found in Western societies, and the continuing strong influence of the state and media in portraying women’s image. There is significant room for research capacity building in scholarship on women in management research, for example, and through cross-fertilization of different disciplines and more rigorous research design and execution. This paper provides a critical analysis of extant literature on women in management and the ideologies underpinning it, and offers some suggestions for future research and conceptualization. (shrink)
A decentralized adaptive control based on human linguistic is investigated to learn human behaviors for multiple robotic manipulators. Many experts’ words or sentences can be transferred into the control actions by employing membership functions in robot systems, which can be synthesized fuzzy controller by employing reasoning mechanism. For the unknown model dynamical robot manipulators, one adjustable parameter that relates to the approximation accuracy of fuzzy logic systems is introduced at first, which be utilized to deal with the unknown dynamics of (...) robot manipulators. Switching fuzzy adaptive controller is designed to overcome the limitation of logic structure that the number of adaptive laws only focus on fuzzy rules in conventional fuzzy logic systems. Another advantage of this design method is that the control with human linguistic extend the semi-global stability to global stability. Finally, effectiveness of the developed control design scheme has been shown in simulation example. (shrink)
A distributed fuzzy adaptive control with similar parameters is constructed for a class of heterogeneous multiagent systems. Unlike many existing works, the dimensions of each multiagent dynamic system are considered to be nonidentical in this paper. Firstly, similar properties for different dimensions of multiagent systems are introduced, and some similar parameters among multiagent systems are also proposed. Secondly, a distributed fuzzy adaptive control on the basis of similar parameters is designed for the consensus of leader-follower multiagent systems. Following the graph (...) theory and Lyapunov stability approach, it is concluded that UUB of all signals in the closed-loop system can be guaranteed, and the consensus tacking error converges to a small compact zero set. Finally, a simulation example with different dimensions is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. (shrink)
We investigate the role of social-media-triggered public pressure on corporate social responsibility that includes expectations of transparency and accountability on the firm’s part, and participative/evaluative inputs on the public’s part. Using the date when S&P 500 firms established corporate Twitter accounts, we investigate the impact of corporate social media exposure on CSR outcomes. Results from baseline regressions indicate that firms with Twitter accounts significantly outperform industry peers in CSR rating, after controlling for firm and industry characteristics. To test potential reverse (...) causality, we use a dynamic treatment effect model to explore within firm changes of CSR, and find that firms’ CSR rating improves in year one- and year two after establishing a Twitter account, while no difference emerged in similar comparisons with peers prior to the Twitter account establishment. Additionally, Granger causality tests results show that corporate Twitter presence improves CSR performance; it is also shown that CSR outcomes do not motivate corporations to establish a social media presence on Twitter. Finally, firms with more experience on Twitter, and those with more followers, tweets or Twitter accounts are associated with improved CSR outcomes. We draw on two theories and qualitative interviews with senior CSR executives to explain why social media influences CSR firm behaviors. (shrink)
I develop an account of homology and homoplasy drawing on their use in biological inference and explanation. Biologists call on homology and homoplasy to infer character states, support adaptationist explanations, identify evolutionary novelties and hypothesize phylogenetic relationships. In these contexts, the concepts must be understood phylogenetically and kept separate: as they play divergent roles, overlap between the two ought to be avoided. I use these considerations to criticize an otherwise attractive view defended by Gould, Hall, and Ramsey & Peterson. By (...) this view, homology and homoplasy can only be delineated qua some level of description, and some homoplasies (parallelisms) are counted as homologous. I develop an account which retains the first, but rejects the second, aspect of that view. I then characterize parallelisms and convergences in terms of their causal role. By the Strict Continuity account, homology and homoplasy are defined phylogenetically and without overlaps, meeting my restriction. Convergence and parallelisms are defined as two types of homoplasy: convergent homoplasies are largely constrained by external factors, while parallelisms are due to internal constraints. (shrink)
Economic openness, both in terms of increased international trade exposure and enhanced inter-firm networking, has been a key element of China’s economic emergence since the implementation of market reforms and the “opening-up policy” over 30 years ago. Unfortunately, these changes have also coincided with the increased incidence of bribery and corruption. Both in general, and in the specific context of China, research on the relationship between a firm’s tendency toward openness and its propensity to engage in bribery is scarce. This (...) study seeks to fill this gap based on empirical evidence provided by a large sample of Chinese firms. The findings of the study reveal that firms’ increased networking and openness tend to occur contemporaneously with greater bribery and corruption. We suggest that this may be due to the misuse of guanxi-based networks that coincide with the presence of firms’ open network strategies, heightened by the potential loss of resource and capability heterogeneity (and hence reduced competitive advantages) in the context of openness. We further find that firms paying bribes do so as an attempt to overcome unnecessary bureaucratic processes and ineffective institutional support that might tend to hinder their development. (shrink)
Rising negative emotions are like “time bombs” that impede productivity in the workplace. The present investigation provides an insight into the effects of defensive silence and defensive voice on counterproductive work behavior through knowledge hiding in the context of knowledge workers in Chinese academic institutions. Partial least square structural equation modeling was applied to the current samples. The study obtained conjecture the proposed mediating role of knowledge hiding between the negative working attitude and counterproductive work behavior, which is against the (...) organizational norms and performance. The result indicates that the positive relationships exist from defensive silence and defensive voice to counterproductive work behavior, mediated by knowledge hiding. This study links knowledge hiding literature and stimulus-organism-response to better explore the academic behavior in a knowledge setting. (shrink)
To consider the jump problem of the Chinese stock market, this paper takes the CSI 300 Index from April 2005 to November 2015 as the research object, uses the rescaled range analysis method to examine the fractal characteristics of the Chinese stock market in the past ten years, and deduces the possibility of multiple bubbles in the Chinese stock market. Based on this, combined with the log-periodic power law model, the stock market bubbles are identified in different periods. The results (...) show that China’s stock market has some anomalies in terms of positive bubbles, negative bubbles, and reverse bubbles, as well as the cross occurrence of reverse-negative bubbles. Besides, through a comparison with the major foreign stock markets, it is found that the fluctuation range of the Chinese stock market is much larger than that of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the FTSE 100 indices in the same period and there are also more types of multibubbles, which is a connotative anomaly that makes the Chinese stock market different from other major stock markets. Furthermore, the bubble phenomenon in the Chinese stock market during the periods of 2005/4–2007/10 and 2015/6–2015/11 is studied, and it is found that there is a jump anomaly in the Chinese stock market. Finally, based on the above empirical analysis and the current state of the stock market, this paper provides some suggestions for improving the mechanism of the Chinese stock market. (shrink)
Volatility is widely used in different financial areas, and forecasting the volatility of financial assets can be valuable. In this paper, we use deep neural network and long short-term memory model to forecast the volatility of stock index. Most related research studies use distance loss function to train the machine learning models, and they gain two disadvantages. The first one is that they introduce errors when using estimated volatility to be the forecasting target, and the second one is that their (...) models cannot be compared to econometric models fairly. To solve these two problems, we further introduce a likelihood-based loss function to train the deep learning models and test all the models by the likelihood of the test sample. The results show that our deep learning models with likelihood-based loss function can forecast volatility more precisely than the econometric model and the deep learning models with distance loss function, and the LSTM model is the better one in the two deep learning models with likelihood-based loss function. (shrink)
This essay develops an inferential account of model explanation, based on Mauricio Suárez’s inferential conception of scientific representation and Alisa Bokulich’s counterfactual account of model explanation. It is suggested that the fact that a scientific model can explain is essentially linked to how a modeler uses an established model to make various inferences about the target system on the basis of results derived from the model. The inference practice is understood as a two-step activity, with the first step involving making (...) counterfactual statements about the model itself and the second step involving making hypothetical statements transferring over claims derived from the model onto the target. To illustrate how this two-step activity proceeds, an agent-based simulation model is discussed. (shrink)
With the rapid development of technologies, online learning, especially email dialogue journaling, has been playing an increasingly important role in foreign language learning and teaching in recent years. While many studies have examined the effect of email learning on student learning performance, few have looked into students? attitudes towards email application and its impact on their learning outcomes. Positive user attitudes (high self?efficacy) have been considered critical factors that contribute to the subsequent and successful academic performance. By integrating email for (...) the reading learning process, this study developed an electronic?based peer collaborative environment to explore students? attitudes towards email application in reading classes. Specifically, the relationship between students? self?efficacy and their reading performance was examined. The results demonstrate that most students maintain positive attitudes towards the potential outcomes of email application on reading achievement. Furthermore, the feature of electronic discussion has a greater direct effect on the reading enhancement. Implications of certain designs of email tasks for an enhanced second language reading development are presented. (shrink)
Large-scale engineering projects make tremendous contributions to China’s social and economic development; meanwhile, due to the diversity of stakeholders, the dispersion of time and space, and the complexity of information dissemination, large-scale engineering projects are easy to cause conflicts among stakeholders that affect social stability. The previous studies on stakeholder conflicts of large-scale engineering projects mainly focused on the game model among stakeholders, without considering the influence of stakeholders’ interaction complex networks formed by social relations on the conflict amplification. For (...) the two main stakeholders of the government and the resident that play a key role in China’s large-scale engineering projects, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of the main stakeholder conflict amplification and analyzes the evolutionary results of the conflict between the government and the resident in different situations. The small-world network is chosen as the complex network type of the simulation study since it is very similar with the topology of the realistic social network. Based on the NetLogo simulation platform, the stakeholder conflict amplification process of large-scale engineering projects on the small-world network is analyzed, and relevant management measures are proposed to defuse the stakeholder conflict of large-scale engineering projects. By using the evolutionary game model on complex networks, this paper studies the stakeholder conflict on the small-world network, providing reference for stakeholder conflict management of large-scale engineering projects in China. (shrink)
The present study aims to survey Chinese mental health professionals’ attitudes toward therapeutic confidentiality with adolescent patients in specific clinical situations, and compare Chinese adolescents’ and parents’ beliefs about when most mental health professionals would breach confidentiality. A sample of 36 mental health practitioners, 152 parents, and 164 adolescents completed a survey to assess their opinions about when confidentiality should be breached in 18 specific clinical situations. Nearly half of the parents and adolescents and 78% of the therapists in our (...) sample selected “yes” in response to the question of whether the principle of confidentiality applies to adolescents. However, 49% of parents indicated “no,” and 53% of adolescents indicated “not sure.” Compared to adolescents, parents were significantly more likely to believe that therapists would breach confidentiality for the high-breach-likelihood items. For the low-breach-likelihood items, adolescents and parents were significantly more likely than therapists to believe confidentiality should be breached. Results from this study provide data to inform the development, refinement, practical implementation, and communication of guidelines and recommendations specific to adolescents receiving psychotherapy in China. (shrink)
