With the high frequency and intensity of worldwide disasters, cause-related marketing campaigns with sudden disasters are becoming increasingly popular. However, little is known about whether and how cause acuteness may influence consumer attitudes. This research aims to extend this research area through investigating the relationship between cause acuteness and consumer attitudes toward the product, as well as its underlying mechanism and boundary conditions. Based on a moral psychology perspective, we propose a theoretical model focusing on the mediating role of moral (...) elevation in influencing consumer attitudes. This model also incorporates product-cause fit and information transparency as moderators underpinning necessary conditions that are likely to lead to positive consumer attitudes. Four empirical studies were conducted to test our model. Our research results reveal that consumers have more positive attitudes toward the product associated with a sudden disaster than with an ongoing tragedy. Furthermore, the positive effect of cause acuteness on consumer attitudes is mediated by enhanced moral elevation, which occurs under the conditions of high product-cause fit and high information transparency. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a series of chain reactions, like international trade breakdown, stock market collapse, and crude oil's collapse, have adversely affected the global economy, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises. As a result, the Chinese government issued many fiscal and financial policies to support SMEs. This paper analyzes SMEs' coping methods and conceptual changes affected by the epidemic and distinguishes “victims” and “beneficiaries.” Subsequently, based on extensive international experience and local government experience, it provides effective suggestions for the (...) Chinese government to deal with the post-epidemic era's economic changes, policy suggestions, and coping strategies for SMEs' short-term and long-term sustainable development. (shrink)

Published in German during the last 15 years, the 13 essays in this volume provide readers with valuable knowledge of the much discussed theme of hermeneutics today. Gadamer was an early student of Martin Heidegger and has been a lifelong friend and interpreter. These essays are an outgrowth of Gadamer's Truth and Method. They can be understood, however, independently of it. Gadamer's standpoint is a blend of Hegel's and Heidegger's, with his own independent development in part. The book contains a (...) long and highly competent introduction by the editor, David E. Linge, who has translated most of the essays. - Choice, on back cover. (shrink)

We examine the relationship between social insurance contributions and earnings management for publicly listed firms in China. Our empirical results show that the social insurance contributions burden significantly reduces the degree of earnings management by reducing the level of free cash flow. Additionally, the negative relation between social insurance contributions burden and earnings management is more pronounced when the internal and external social insurance pressures are high and when the firms are large non-state-owned enterprises. We also discuss the heterogeneity among (...) firms for different financing constraints, external financing environment, regional marketization, and internal and external corporate governance. Finally, we further find that under the dual collecting system, although the social security administration is a better collecting agency, the local tax bureau acting with full responsibility is more effective than the collecting system. (shrink)

The self-organizing model and expectation-maximization method are two traditional identification methods for switching models. They interactively update the parameters and model identities based on offline algorithms. In this paper, we propose a flexible recursive least squares algorithm which constructs the cost function based on two kinds of errors: the neighboring two-parameter estimation errors and the output estimation errors. Such an algorithm has several advantages over the two traditional identification algorithms: it can estimate the parameters of all the sub-models without prior (...) knowledge of the model identities; has less computational efforts; and can update the parameters with newly arrived data. The convergence properties and simulation examples are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm. (shrink)

The intellectual debates on wise entrepreneurship behavior such as decision making tend to focus on the relationship between economic rationality and morality, while overlooking the important role affect plays. To fill in this gap, this paper proposes a theoretical framework based on the Confucian concepts of ren and yi and studies their practical manifestation in qing and li 1 for decision making. Drawing from 32 in-depth interviews and 52 vignettes with Chinese SME entrepreneurs, this study has found that qing plays (...) an essential role in decision making. Chinese entrepreneurs had to deal with the dilemma relating to qing and li 1 holistically to reach a balanced outcome in their everyday business practices. As a major contribution, this study extends the study of Confucian ethics by highlighting ren-yi as an important perspective for understanding Chinese entrepreneurial decision making and also for promoting the affective dimensions for entrepreneurial ethical decision making in general. (shrink)

Improving the user stickiness becomes increasingly valued, due to the severe user churn of livestreaming services. Previous studies pay much attention to the influencing factors of technology on user stickiness, ignoring the emotional factors. This study examined the impact of the emotional labor of network anchors on user stickiness in the context of livestreaming service. We extended prior findings in three ways. The results of Study 1 demonstrated that the emotional labor of network anchor positively influenced user stickiness, and immersion (...) experience plays a mediating role. The results of Study 2 demonstrated that the deep acting strategies of emotional labor had a stronger effect when compared with surface acting strategies. The results of Study 3 demonstrated that the effect of emotional labor on user stickiness was stronger for the users with prevention focus compared with promotion focus. Based on the perspective of emotional labor, this study extends the previous research on user stickiness and is valuable for guiding the practice of livestreaming services. (shrink)

With the internationalisation of the Chinese market, Confucian ethics began to draw researchers' attention. However, little research has been conducted in the specific application of Confucian ethics in marketing communication. This article fills in the research gap by examining how Confucian ethics underpins the discourse of Chinese Expo invitations. Chinese sales managers' views are incorporated into the analysis as substantiation of findings. Confucian ethics embraces both qing (emotion) and li (reason) and relevant ethical values such as guanxi (connections), qing, and (...) mianzi (face) play an important role for advertising Expos and trade fairs. The study also highlights the complexities of Chinese Expo advertising that is embedded in inviting behaviour. These findings shed light on understanding Confucian ethics in marketing communications in general and have implications for ethical international marketing and advertising practices. (shrink)

Prior research indicates that managers’ dark personality traits increase their tendency to engage in disruptive and unethical organizational behaviors including accounting earnings management. Other research suggests that the prevalence of dark personalities in management may represent an accidental byproduct of selecting managers with accompanying desirable attributes that fit the stereotype of a “strong leader.” Our paper posits that organizations may hire some managers who have dark personality traits because their willingness to push ethical boundaries aligns with organizational objectives, particularly in (...) the accounting context where ethical considerations are especially important. Using several validation studies and experiments, we find that experienced executives and recruiting professionals favor hiring a candidate with dark personality traits into an accounting management position over an otherwise better-qualified candidate when the hiring organization faces pressure to manage earnings. Our results help to illuminate why individuals with dark personality traits may effectively compete for high-level accounting positions. (shrink)

‘Individualized medicine’ is an emerging paradigm in clinical life science research. We conducted a socio-empirical interview study in a leading German clinical research group, aiming at implementing ‘individualized medicine’ of colorectal cancer. The goal was to investigate moral and social issues related to physician–patient interaction and clinical care, and to identify the points raised, supported and rejected by the physicians and researchers. Up to now there has been only limited insight into how experts dedicated to individualized medicine view its problems. (...) Interviews with researchers and clinicians were based on a prestructured questionnaire. The content analysis revealed a broad spectrum of opinions. Major findings were disappointments with the limits of the current therapy regimen and clinical practice; problematic impacts on physician–patient relationship; and an informed consent procedure which is mainly based on paternalistic assumptions. According to our analysis, major problems will be uncertainties related to the biomarker's sensitivity and specificity, and the identification of ‘non-responders’. However, the findings also indicate that experts expect evidence-based medicine to replace decisions based on gut feeling or hierarchical structures. (shrink)

Cross-cultural competence is often studied as part of the foreigner's one-way adaptation to the host culture while ignoring the dynamic nature of adaptation at the discourse level of interactions. To address this issue, this article proposes a conceptual model to study cross-cultural discursive competence exhibited in individual interactions in business settings. The model is based on relational empathy and genre theories and, in particular, it develops the notional concepts of `cultural space' and `text reconstruction' that stress a two-way cultural adaptation (...) underpinned by building relational empathy and intercultural alliances. In addition, the study proposes that the triangulation of cultural, institutional and sociocognitive spaces is the key to understanding and interpreting text reconstruction as a dynamic process of two-way cultural adaptation. The three-space model is exemplified through an analysis of cross-cultural interactions that occurred at a business negotiation meeting. (shrink)

Using Bakhtin's notion of polyphony, this study explored the discussion of the end-of-life issues in the Course on Life and Death Education in one Chinese university. Ethnographic methods were adopted to investigate the collision between the classroom voices and the voices of the mainstream culture on end-of-life in the process of developing students' attitudes toward death. The findings revealed that “to understand death” involved challenging the voice of “strangeness and fear of death”; “honestly facing up to and accepting the feelings (...) of the fear, pain, and helplessness” was the response to “be brave”; and the goal “to die peacefully” resisted the notion of “extending life at any cost.” Through the collision between these voices, students developed their attitudes toward death in facing, understanding, accepting, and choosing how to die. The analysis further revealed that providing only one “answer” to death by the teacher is not sufficient or effective to foster students' attitudes toward death because the students are a diverse group holding different views on the end-of-life issues, which demonstrated the importance of creating dialogues in the life and death education. (shrink)

Green Human Resource Management supports promoting and incorporating sustainable development with regard to their resources. Managers and customers actively utilize the limited resources efficiently and effectively to accomplish environment-friendly goals and objectives. The study focuses on investigating the moderating role of diffidence between Green HRM, among eco-friendly behavior and Employee Performance of frontline employees of the hospitality sector. Two hundred ten individuals particapted in the research from hospitality sector with regard to examine green HRM policies of employees along with their (...) influence on consumer buying behvaiour. Frontline employees incorporated the data on HRM performance, eco-friendly behavior, and diffidence. Besides, consumers gave their opinion on consumer buying behavior. The study’s findings revealed that Green HRM, aka Green HRM, directly impacts consumer behavior. In addition to this diffidence moderates the relationship between Green HRM and employee performance and employee eco-friendly behavior. Besides, future studies can explore the clothing and banking sector as the current study was conducted in fast food sector. (shrink)

Understanding differences in communication styles is becoming increasingly important in intercultural business communication as more and more countries are involved in doing business internationally and more and more people are doing business with mainland China. This article aims to compare the structural moves used in English and Chinese sales letters from social, intercultural and pragmatic perspectives. It has been argued that the study of text styles such as linearity and circularity in comparative rhetoric may not be sufficient to reflect the (...) overall features of the genres involved. Therefore a holistic approach based on genre study and schema theory has been employed to explore the communicative purposes and various levels of the text. Hall's high- and low-context cultures and cross-cultural pragmatics have also been incorporated to enrich the genre approach. A corpus of 40 sales letters was examined and it was found that Chinese sales letters share similar marketing strategies with English letters as the Chinese economy is becoming increasingly decentralized and privatized. Differences in communication patterns between these letters were identified, however, and shown to be largely due to a number of factors such as the specific values and beliefs of each culture and the different business practice in mainland China. (shrink)

This paper proposes a Confucian wisdom perspective to study entrepreneurship practice in the Chinese transition economy. It argues that existing research on Chinese entrepreneurship has not paid adequate attention to qing (positive affects), which is an integral part of Confucian wisdom. It is essential to investigate qing and its interaction with li (reason relating to rules and regulations) and cognitive processes within the institutional context of the transition economy. To address this issue, this paper integrates traditional practical Confucian wisdom and (...) Western institution theory to develop a theoretical framework for understanding practically wise entrepreneurship in China. The model is applied to the analysis of interview results with Chinese entrepreneurs, who indicated that they applied Confucian wisdom in starting up and developing their businesses. This finding has theoretical and practical implications for entrepreneurship development and training. (shrink)

本书内容包括：启蒙早期的欧洲大陆与英国、转写与翻译说明、英文转写与中文译稿、洛克现存书信简介、洛克书信中关于中国的部分、洛克早期未刊作品与中国、洛克藏书概述、洛克的中国藏书等。.

Voluntary disclosures of sustainability information have recently received considerable attention by investors, regulators, and public companies in improving reliability and integrity of corporate reporting. We examine the association between the quantity and quality of sustainability disclosures and earnings quality in the context of corporate ethical value and culture. We posit that sustainability disclosures of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance reports are linked to earnings quality, because of the importance of both earnings quality and ESG sustainability disclosures to investors and (...) trustworthiness of corporate reporting. We collect our sample of 35,110 firm-year observations between 1999 and 2015. Using both difference-in-difference tests and OLS regression, we find that sustainability disclosure quantity is positively associated with innate earnings quality and negatively correlated with discretionary earnings quality in mitigating managerial earnings manipulation and unethical opportunistic reporting behavior. Further tests illustrate that sustainability disclosure quality can strengthen the positive relation between innate earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity and mitigate the negative relation between discretionary earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity. Finally, additional tests suggest that the relation between earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity is moderated by corporate structure and prior-year sustainability performance. Our results provide policy, practical, and research implications as ESG sustainability reporting is being integrated into corporate culture and business models. (shrink)

The explosion of multiomics data poses new challenges to existing data mining methods. Joint analysis of multiomics data can make the best of the complementary information that is provided by different types of data. Therefore, they can more accurately explore the biological mechanism of diseases. In this article, two forms of joint nonnegative matrix factorization based on the sparse and graph Laplacian regularization method are proposed. In the method, the graph regularization constraint can preserve the local geometric structure of data. (...) L 2,1 -norm regularization can enhance the sparsity among the rows and remove redundant features in the data. First, SG-jNMF1 projects multiomics data into a common subspace and applies the multiomics fusion characteristic matrix to mine the important information closely related to diseases. Second, multiomics data of the same disease are mapped into the common sample space by SG-jNMF2, and the cluster structures are detected clearly. Experimental results show that SG-jNMF can achieve significant improvement in sample clustering compared with existing joint analysis frameworks. SG-jNMF also effectively integrates multiomics data to identify co-differentially expressed genes. SG-jNMF provides an efficient integrative analysis method for mining the biological information hidden in heterogeneous multiomics data. (shrink)

The antithesis of proletarian and bourgeois thinking on the questions of class and class struggle has been obvious from the beginning. The bourgeoisie have never properly explained why class and class struggle exist in society. At the time when they became reactionary, they did their utmost to obfuscate the class contradictions in capitalist society. Bourgeois sociology, which seeks to maintain the advantages of the bourgeois class, has made a concentrated effort to reproach such views; moreover, it has become one of (...) the ideological weapons of the modern-day bourgeoisie in their struggle against Marxism-Leninism. (shrink)

This paper reports an instructor and her students’ experiences with ethics in conducting action research in a university teacher-training class. The nature of educational action research suggests the dual roles of the instructor and students, the former as both a researcher and a practitioner, and the latter as both research participants and learners. However, in following an ethics procedure to allow students to opt out of the research project anonymously but, at the same time, not to deny their access to (...) learning opportunities, both the instructor and students experienced tensions as they tried to separate and switch roles for research and teaching/learning. Instead of benefiting from the research to explore and reflect on learning, many students complained about their sense of being used as research participants. The article suggests new ethics review procedures to support and help action research to generate valuable results in teaching and learning. (shrink)

Bd. 1. System des menschlichen Erkennens -- Bd. 2. Die stammesgeschichtliche Entwicklung des menschlichen Sprechens -- Bd. 3. Die Entwicklung der Operation "Messen" -- Bd. 4. Die Evolution der instrumentellen Wahrnehmung -- Bd. 5. Die Genesis des schlussfolgernden Denkens -- Bd. 6. Die evolutionären Stufen der Analyse (des Scheidens und Unterscheidens) -- Bd. 7. Das Werden des Vorstellens (Geistes) -- Bd. 8. Die Mechanisierung und Automation der erkennenden Akte und Operationen -- Bd. 9. Die Entstehung des beziehenden Denkens -- Bd. (...) 10. Der phylogenetische Weg der Zeichengebung (Entwicklung der Elemente der Verständigung) -- Bd. 11. Der Irrtum -- Bd. 12. Kritik der Erkenntnislehre des transzendentalen Idealismus Immanuel Kants. (shrink)

This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer's _Kleine Schriften, _dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer applies hermeneutical analysis to Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology, an approach that proves critical and instructive.

PurposeTo examine the influence of family functioning on college students’ loneliness and the mediating effects of core self-evaluation and problematic mobile phone use.MethodsFamily Function Scale, Core Self-evaluation Scale, Problem Mobile Phone Use Scale, and Loneliness Scale were used to investigate 8,524 college students.Results Family functioning positively predicted core self-evaluation and negatively predicted loneliness ; Core self-evaluation negatively predicted problematic mobile phone use and loneliness ; Problematic mobile phone use significantly positively predicted loneliness ; Core self-evaluation and problematic mobile phone use (...) showed a significant chain-mediation effect between family functioning and loneliness.ConclusionThe results are helpful to comprehend the producing mechanism of loneliness and provide a theoretical basis for the intervention of loneliness. (shrink)

Over the last decade in Germany, a number of neuroscientists—and among them most prominently Wolf Singer—have claimed to be able to offer scientific evidence derived from neurophysiologic findings to conclusively negate the existence of human free will. In this paper, Singer’s position is examined according to its principal characteristics in order to answer the question whether it is a novel position as opposed to a position pertaining to one of the traditions of western philosophy and anthropology. Furthermore, we try to (...) judge whether the neurobiological findings Singer and others use to justify their position are apt to satisfy the criteria for the presence of scientific evidence, i.e., if they are good reasons to believe that human will is unfree. (shrink)

- A powerful defence of religion in which the author draws upon his wide knowledge of the world religions.- One of the greatest ironies of the modern world is that its most ardent champions are the blindest to the real assets of the times.

Uncertainty for policy makers is not new but the pressure to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty is perhaps greater than ever. The arrival of new scientific developments such as pharmacogenetics offers potentially great benefits . They have passionate supporters as well as doubters. The evidence is often extensive but unclear and policy makers may find themselves under pressure to make decisions before they feel that the evidence is compelling.The UK is particularly well placed to play a leading role in (...) the development of pharmacogenetics and is equally well placed to derive the benefits to both health and wealth that could flow from this. However, the uncertainties threaten to overwhelm the capacity of policy makers to act effectively. The uncertainties are both about the context within which the science and delivery of pharmacogentics is being developed and about the interests that could be served. This paper maps these uncertainties and concludes with some suggestions, drawing on deliberative democracy and futures thinking, as to how policy makers might manage the tensions and dilemmas they face by moving from an unstable, emergent policy arena to a more stable one. (shrink)

In this study, we built and tested a theoretical model to determine how ethical leadership affects team creativity among teams composed of different characteristics. Following social learning theory and an antecedent–benefit–cost framework, we conducted analyses of multisource data from 50 team supervisors and 186 employees, which revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between ethical leadership and team creativity. The teams exhibited more creativity when there was a moderate level of ethical leadership than when there were very low or very high levels. (...) Moreover, from an interactional perspective, we found that team faultlines significantly moderated the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and team creativity such that the inverted U-shaped relationship was more significant among teams with weak team faultlines. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Governments are investing in precision medicine with the aim of improving healthcare through the use of genomic analyses and data analytics to develop tailored treatment approaches for individual patients. The success of PM is contingent upon clear public communications that engender trust and secure the social licence to collect and share large population-wide data sets because specific consent for each data re-use is impractical. Variation in the terminology used by different programmes used to describe PM may hinder clear communication and (...) threaten trust. Language is used to create common understanding and expectations regarding precision medicine between researchers, clinicians and the volunteers. There is a need to better understand public interpretations of PM-related terminology. This paper reports on a qualitative study involving 24 focus group participants in the multi-lingual context of Singapore. The study explored how Singaporeans interpret and understand the terms ‘precision medicine’ and ‘personalised medicine’, and which term they felt more aptly communicates the concept and goals of PM. Results suggest that participants were unable to readily link the terms with this area of medicine and initially displayed preferences for the more familiar term of ‘personalised’. The use of visual aids to convey key concepts resonated with participants, some of whom then indicated preferences for the term ‘precision’ as being a more accurate description of PM research. These aids helped to facilitate dialogue around the ethical and social value, as well as the risks, of PM. Implications for programme developers and policy makers are discussed. (shrink)

The slogan “the personal is political” captures the distinctive challenge to the public-private divide posed by contemporary feminists. As such, feminist activism is not necessarily congruent with civic engagement, which is predicated on the paradoxical need to both bridge and sustain the public-private divide. Lee argues that rather than subverting the divide, the politics of the personal offers an alternative understanding of civic engagement that aims to reinstate individuals’ dignity and agency.