COVID-19, the most severe public health problem to occur in the past 10 years, has greatly impacted people's mental health. Colleges in China have reopened, and how to prevent college students from suffering secondary damage due to school reopening remains elusive. This cross-sectional study was aimed to evaluate the psychological impact of COVID-19 after school reopening and explore via machine learning the factors that influence anxiety and depression among students. Among the 478 valid online questionnaires collected between September 14th and (...) September 20th, 74 showed symptoms of anxiety, and 155 showed symptoms of depression. Descriptive analysis of basic personal characteristics indicated that students at a higher grade, having relatives or friends who have been infected, fearing being infected, and having a pessimistic attitude to COVID-19 easily experience anxiety or depression. The Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique was utilized to counteract the imbalance of retrieved data. The Akaike Information Criterion and multivariate logistic regression were performed to explore significant influence factors. The results indicate that exercise frequency, alcohol use, school reopening, having relatives or friends who have been infected, self-quarantine, quarantine of classmates, taking temperature routinely, wearing masks routinely, sleep quality, retaining holiday, availability of package delivery, take-out availability, lockdown restriction, several areas in school closed due to COVID-19, living conditions in the school, taking the final examinations after school reopening, and the degree to which family economic status is influenced by COVID-19 are the primary influence factors for anxiety or depression. To evaluate the effect of our model, we used 5-fold cross-validation, and the average area under the curve values of the receiver operating characteristic curves of anxiety and depression on the test set reached 0.885 and 0.806, respectively. To conclude, we examined the presence of anxiety and depression symptoms among Chinese college students after school reopening and explored many factors influencing students' mental health, providing reasonable school management suggestions. (shrink)

Although substantial evidence demonstrates that directing attention to specific items is important for improving the performance of visual working memory, it is still not clear whether the attended items were better protected. The present study, thus, adopted a pre-cueing paradigm to examine the effect of attention direction and perceptual distractor on VWM. The results showed that a valid visual cue improved the individuals’ VWM performances and reduced their reaction time compared to the invalid and neutral cues. However, the VWM performances (...) in the valid and neutral cue conditions were more disrupted by a post-stimuli distractor compared to the invalid cue condition. The findings suggest that although directing attention can improve the VWM performance, it is not efficient in protecting information from being distracted. (shrink)

Recent research in psycholinguistics suggests that language processing frequently involves mental imagery. This paper focuses on visual imagery and discusses two issues regarding the processing of polysemous words (i.e. words with multiple related meanings or senses) – co-predication and sense-relatedness. It aims to show how mental imagery can illuminate these two issues.

The feeling of being offended, as a moral emotion, plays a key role in issues such as slurs, the offense principle, ethics of humor, etc. However, no adequate theory of offense has been developed in the literature, and it remains unclear what questions such a theory should answer. This paper attempts to fill the gap by performing two tasks. The first task is to clarify and summarize the questions of offense into two kinds, the descriptive questions (e.g., what features differentiate (...) offense from similar moral states like anger?) and the normative questions (e.g., what are the conditions for taking offense to be apt?). The second task is to answer these questions by developing what I call ‘the violated norm theory of offense’. According to this theory, feeling offended entails that the norm one endorses is judged to be violated by the offender. Appealing to the violated norm enables this theory to answer the descriptive questions (e.g., taking offense differs from anger because of features like not requiring victims and the difficulty of animal offense) and the normative questions of offense (e.g., taking offense is apt only if the violated norm is universalizable). (shrink)

_An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy_ unlocks the mystery of ancient Chinese philosophy and unravels the complexity of Chinese Buddhism by placing them in the contemporary context of discourse. Elucidates the central issues and debates in Chinese philosophy, its different schools of thought, and its major philosophers. Covers eight major philosophers in the ancient period, among them Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. Illuminates the links between different schools of philosophy. Opens the door to further study of the relationship between Chinese and Western (...) philosophy. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, this study investigates how U.S. higher education leaders have centered their crisis management on values and guiding ethical principles. We conducted 55 in-depth interviews with leaders from 30 U.S. higher education institutions, with most leaders participating in two interviews. We found that crisis plans created prior to the COVID-19 pandemic were inadequate due to the long duration and highly uncertain nature of the crisis. Instead, higher education leaders applied guiding principles on the fly (...) to support their decision-making. If colleges and universities infuse shared values into their future crisis plans, they will not have to develop a moral compass on the fly for the next pandemic. This paper suggests the following somewhat universal shared values: engage in accuracy, transparency, and accountability; foster deliberative dialog; prioritize safety; support justice, fairness, and equity; and engage in an ethic of care. To navigate ethics tensions, leaders need to possess crisis-relevant expertise or ensure that such expertise is present among crisis management team members. Standing up formal ethics committees composed of diverse stakeholders also is instrumental in navigating tensions inherent in crises. The next pandemic is already on the horizon according to experts. Through infusing values into future crisis plans, higher education leaders can be confident that their responses will be grounded in their communities’ shared values. (shrink)

A frequent caveat in online dating profiles – “No fats, femmes, or Asians” – caused an LGBT activist to complain about the bias against Asians in the American gay community, which he called “racial looksism”. In response, he was asked that, if he himself would not date a fat person, why he should find others not dating Asians so upsetting. This response embodies a popular attitude that personal preferences or tastes are simply personal matters – they are not subject to (...) moral evaluation. In this paper, I argue, against this popular attitude, that a personal preference like racial looksism is indeed wrong. A preference like racial looksism is wrong because it is an overgeneralization that disrespects individuality by treating people as exchangeable tokens of one type, and such disrespect denies its objects appreciation that their dignity entitles them to. As it turns out, there is on my account a relevant moral difference between racial looksism and simple looksism. (shrink)

The relationship between space (absolute space) and matters (relative space) is similar to that between a stage and performers, where they both exist independently and are interconnected. This work first explores the hypothesis that the Essential space of the Universe is absolute and is zero-dimensional. The second part of the hypothesis discusses that the three-dimensional Universe is a relative space occupied by matters and a representation of its relative positions. The hypothesis in this work will be explored and discussed using (...) reference from the correspondence between Clarke and Leibniz. This work tentatively concludes that the space is absolute and zero-dimensional. (shrink)

The issues of organizational wrongdoing damage organizational performance and limit the development of organizations. Although organizational members may know the wrongdoing and have the opportunity to blow the whistle, they would keep silent because of the interpersonal risks. However, leaders can play an important role in shaping employee whistleblowing. This study focuses on discovering the mechanisms of how authentic leaders influence employee whistleblowing with a sample from China. Results demonstrate that authentic leadership is positively related to internal whistleblowing. Team psychological (...) safety partly mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and internal whistleblowing. Personal identification partly mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and internal whistleblowing. The study contributes to the extant theory by filling the gap between leadership and whistleblowing. (shrink)

This study examines the varying roles of power, status, and national culture in unethical decision-making. Most research on unethical behavior in organizations is grounded in Western societies; empirical comparative studies of the antecedents of unethical behavior across nations are rare. The authors conduct this comparative study using scenario studies with four conditions in both China and Canada. The results demonstrate that power is positively related to unethical decision-making in both countries. Status has a positive effect on unethical decision-making and facilitates (...) the unethical decisions of Canadian participants who have high power but not Chinese participants who have high power. To explicate participants’ unethical decision-making rationales, the authors ask participants to justify their unethical decisions; the results reveal that Chinese participants are more likely to cite position differences, whereas Canadian participants are more likely to cite work effort and personal abilities. These findings expand theoretical research on the relationship between social hierarchy and unethical decision-making and provide practical insights on unethical behavior in organizations. (shrink)

The KK principle states that knowing entails knowing that one knows. This historically popular principle has fallen out of favour among many contemporary philosophers in light of putative counterexamples. Recently, some have defended more palatable versions of KK by weakening the principle. These revisions remain faithful to their predecessor in spirit while escaping crucial objections. This paper examines the prospects of such a strategy. It is argued that revisions of the original principle can be captured by a generalized knowledge iteration (...) principle, Weak-KK, which states that knowing entails the possibility of knowing that one knows. But Weak-KK is vulnerable to an unknowability result and therefore must be rejected. The arguments here suggest that retreating to weaker iteration principles is not an option for the KK enthusiast. (shrink)

This article brings to light how AI research has benefited from post-Wittgensteinian philosophy. My research shows that Wittgenstein’s work began to engage the attention of AI researchers not only in the 1970s down to the present but right from the early beginnings of computational research in the 1950s. More specifically, his later philosophy inspired a group of researchers called the Cambridge Language Research Unit (CLRU) to start one of the first programs in machine translation, information retrieval, mechanical abstracting, and knowledge (...) representation technologies in the early 1950s, all of which have later been claimed for AI and cognitive science. I focus on the philosophical work of CLRU founder Margaret Masterman and her extraordinary but forgotten contributions to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

Air pollution in China has been drawing considerable attention in recent years. The emergence of new energy vehicles provides hope to reduce air pollutant emission. However, consumers' recognition and acceptance of NEVs remain at the early stage. This research aims to explore how consumers' environmental concern influences their NEV purchase intention. Specifically, this research conducted an online survey and an experiment to address the following issues: how consumers' psychological distance toward air pollution influences their purchase intention for NEVs, and does (...) their risk perception of the consequences of air pollution mediate this influence; whether consumers' perceived price level of NEVs plays a moderating role in the relationship between risk perception and purchase intention; and whether the construal level of stimulus can be manipulated to influence consumers' PD toward air pollution to increase their purchase intention for NEVs. The results of study 1, based on a total of 293 valid samples, show that consumers' PD toward air pollution significantly affects their purchase intention for NEVs, and risk perception of the consequences of air pollution plays a considerable mediating role. Meanwhile, consumers' perceived price level of NEVs has a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between risk perception and purchase intention. The results of study 2, based on an online experiment, show that the construal level of stimulus can influence consumers' PD toward air pollution, which in turn affects their purchase intention for NEVs. The findings of this research have implications for businesses' promotional strategies and governments' policies. For instance, low-construal-level promotional materials can be developed to arouse consumers' environmental concern, thereby facilitating their eco-friendly consumption behavior. Governmental financial assistance and other policies can also increase consumers' willingness to purchase NEVs. (shrink)

This paper examines the justifications for using infinite systems to 'recover' thermodynamic properties, such as phase transitions (PT), critical phenomena (CP), and irreversibility, from the micro-structure of matter in bulk. Section 2 is a summary of such rigorous methods as in taking the thermodynamic limit (TL) to recover PT and in using renormalization (semi-) group approach (RG) to explain the universality of critical exponents. Section 3 examines various possible justifications for taking TL on physically finite systems. Section 4 discusses the (...) legitimacy of applying TL to the problem of irreversibility and assesses the repercussions for its legitimacy on its home turf. (shrink)

Mandarin focus particles systematically have heterogeneous uses. By examining details of two focus particles jiu ‘only’ and dou ‘even’, this paper explores the hypothesis that varieties of alternatives give rise to systematic ‘ambiguities’. Specifically, by positing sum-based alternative sets and atom-based ones, it maintains unambiguous semantics of jiu as onlyweak and dou as even, while deriving their variability through interaction with alternatives. Independently motivated analyses of distributive/collective readings and contrastive topics, combined with varieties of alternatives, deliver the full range of (...) facts concerning jiu and dou. Theoretically, the paper illustrates an integration of Link, Landman’s theory of pluralites into Rooth’s alternative semantics. (shrink)

Time theft is a costly burden on organizations. However, there is limited knowledge about why time theft occurs. To advance this line of research, this conceptual paper looks at the association between organizational injustice and time theft from identity, moral, and equity perspectives. This paper proposes that organizational injustice triggers time theft through decreased organizational identification. It also proposes that moral disengagement and equity sensitivity moderate this process such that organizational identification is less likely to mediate among employees with high (...) moral disengagement and more likely to mediate among employees who are equity sensitives and entitleds. (shrink)

The previous three articles have discussed scientific ontology, resolving the contradictions between quantum mechanics and relativity using the cosmic origin philosophical framework, and interpreting the principles of natural philosophy through physics. Aristotle established material philosophy and material science, relegating the philosophical concepts of cosmic ontology and the cosmic origin to metaphysics and theology. As a result, philosophy was divided into first philosophy and second philosophy as scientific considerations. When material science developed into the ontology of the universe, able to explain (...) the cosmic origin principle, a major issue arose: after 2500 years of development, humanity has only grasped the meaning of “matter.” Yet, what are “energy” and “information”? We still haven’t figured that out. Modern physics has brought both benefits and contradictions to humanity. To resolve these contradictions, we need to redefine the scientific consideration of “philosophy” and its philosophical concepts. This article continues to explore the contradictions between quantum mechanics and relativity using the principles of cosmic origin, reflecting on the basic concepts of philosophy and human thought. (shrink)

The notion of comparative probability defined in Bayesian subjectivist theory stems from an intuitive idea that, for a given pair of events, one event may be considered “more probable” than the other. Yet it is conceivable that there are cases where it is indeterminate as to which event is more probable, due to, e.g., lack of robust statistical information. We take that these cases involve indeterminate comparative probabilities. This paper provides a Savage-style decision-theoretic foundation for indeterminate comparative probabilities.

This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same ground. I (...) also argue that the practical argument, as it stands, faces a problem of self-defeat. I then construct a new practical argument that avoids both problems. According to this new argument, theistic beliefs are rational to accept because such beliefs best supply us with motivation strong enough to carry out demanding moral tasks. (shrink)

Résumé: L’image du “Dragon baignant le prince” est un thème important dans l’art bouddhique. L’image est née en Inde, et pendant le processus de propagation du bouddhisme vers l’est, elle est apparue dans le Xinjiang, le Gansu, le Qinghai, le Shanxi, le Shaanxi, le Henan, le Shandong, le Jiangsu, le Sichuan, le Tibet et d’autres endroits en Chine. Cependant, la forme et le contenu de ces images sont différents selon les régions et les périodes. L’étude de cette différence est non (...) seulement propice à la compréhension du processus de sinisation de l’art bouddhiste indien, mais approfondit également la compréhension du contenu spécifique de l’échange de l’art bouddhiste l’art entre la Chine et l’Inde. (shrink)

This essay questions the meaning of be-ing and non-be-ing in the DDJ with regard to the root-source meaning of dao. I first explore the meaning of dao as the dark non-be-ing, revealing the connotations of the distinction between dao and things by comparison with some forms of Western metaphysics. The meaning of non-be-ing is elaborated in terms of the dynamic meanings of xu 虚 and chong 沖; The play between be-ing and non-be-ing is explored through the lens of yin and (...) yang qi thinking. Qi thinking determines the mutually manifest and mutually interpretive characteristic of be-ing and non-be-ing. Be-ing and non-be-ing thus understood is an ever-flowing and mutually transforming process that penetrates the different levels of dao, things and humans. In the last part I investigate the meaning of “Be-ing comes from non-be-ing”. (shrink)

This paper first extracted 11 indicators from four aspects of infrastructure, educational equity, teaching quality, and scientific research level and established a multidimensional higher education evaluation system. After that, according to TOPSIS and the entropy method, a comprehensive score of the development of higher education was obtained, and a comprehensive index of higher education was proposed. According to the level of the score, we divide the development status into 5 categories, and use discrete Hopfield neural network for verification. In addition, (...) we applied the model to many countries and chose Vietnam to conduct an in-depth analysis of the model, including reforming policies and evaluating policy effects based on cobweb model. Finally, we found that the application of the model is very universal, but in reality the reform is very difficult. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate how visual–spatial ability predicted academic achievement through arithmetic and reading abilities. Four hundred and ninety-nine Chinese children aged from 10.1 to 11.2 years were recruited and measured visual–spatial, arithmetic, and reading abilities. Their mathematical and Chinese language academic achievements were collected for two consecutive school years, respectively, during the same year as cognitive tests and 1 year after the cognitive tests. Correlation analysis indicated that visual–spatial, arithmetic, and reading abilities and academic achievements were significantly correlated (...) with each other. The structural equation modelling analyses showed that there were two paths from visual–spatial ability to academic achievement: a major path mediated by arithmetic ability and a minor serial mediation path from visual–spatial ability to arithmetic ability to reading ability, then to academic achievement. Results shed light on the importance of visual–spatial ability in education. (shrink)

Ernst Brücke’s 1861 essay Die Elementarorganismen has often been cited as a watershed in the history of physiology as well as in the history of cell theory. In its time it was widely read as a reform of animal cell theory, shifting the concept of the cell away from Schleiden and Schwann’s original cell schema of a membranous vesicle with a nucleus, and towards the protoplasm theory that had developed in botany, centered on the cell’s living contents. It was also (...) notorious for its arguments against the necessity of both the nucleus and the cell membrane. An English translation of “The Elementary Organisms” is presented for the first time in this journal issue, with annotations and illustrations, doi:10.1007/s10739-024-09773-9. Brücke’s essay was not only an intervention into cell theory: historians can read it as a continuation of debates on the nature of the organism and theories of organization, and as an epistemological meditation on the microscope. In addition, although Brücke was known as a founder of the Berlin school of organic physics, “The Elementary Organisms” shows how he combined an avant-garde physicalist physiology with a much older tradition of comparative anatomy and physiology. The following introductory essay will provide a scientific biography of Ernst Brücke up to 1863, with background on debates on biological organization, cell theory, and muscle histology. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics and relativity spurred the Third Industrial Revolution, presenting no contradictions in applied engineering but significant theoretical discord. The electronic computer, another major achievement of this era, transformed humanity through the rise of information networks, marking information science as another critical outcome of the revolution. Matter transforms into energy, energy into matter, and mechanics serve as profound conduits for information, even enabling the creation of robots. Modern physics now faces interpretative divides, having seemingly overlooked philosophy and information science’s foundational (...) roles. Human intellect, while reaching new heights through material philosophy, finds itself tangled in confusion. Has science achieved the apex of thought, or does it face an intellectual dead end? This question hints at a revolutionary awakening in human thought. This paper delves deeply into these questions by analyzing and reflecting on the “Scientific Cosmological Ontology,” “Modern Physical Philosophy Framework,” “The Physical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” and “Reflections on the Philosophy of Science.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe question of the relation between humans and nature lies at the foundation of any philosophy. With the daily worsening environmental crisis, we are forced to face this ancient question again. Yet when we put it into the form of ‘humans and nature’, a metaphysics is already implied and the problem of nature has not yet been questioned. At this moment, the very question that needs to be put forward is, ‘What is nature’? The question of nature will be interrogated (...) through a comparative view in this essay. First, I argue the modern understanding of nature lies at the root of today’s environmental problems. Then, I go back to early Daoism to explore Daoist thinking on ziran. The meaning of ‘dao emulates ziran’ is brought to light through a detailed interpretation of the ziran of dao and things. Ziran penetrates the dao, the heavenly, the earthly and the human. It is with the understanding of ziran that the nature of humans and all things are illuminated. Heidegger’s... (shrink)

The event-triggered consensus control for leader-following multiagent systems subjected to external disturbances is investigated, by using the output feedback. In particular, a novel distributed event-triggered protocol is proposed by adopting dynamic observers to estimate the internal state information based on the measurable output signal. It is shown that under the developed observer-based event-triggered protocol, multiple agents will reach consensus with the desired disturbance attenuation ability and meanwhile exhibit no Zeno behaviors. Finally, a simulation is presented to verify the obtained results.

This paper presents a novel fractional-order PID controller tuning strategy based on Bode’s optimal loop shaping which is commonly used for LTI feedback systems. Firstly, the controller parameters are achieved based on flat phase property and Bode’s optimal reference model, so that the controlled system is robust to gain variations and can achieve desirable transient performance according to various control requirements. Then, robustness analysis of the controlled system is carried out to support the results. Furthermore, the parameter setting is analyzed (...) to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed controller. At last, some simulation examples are shown to verify the accuracy and usefulness of the proposed control strategy. The proposed fractional-order PID controller does not have any restriction on the controlled plant, so it can be widely applied on both integer-order and fractional-order systems. (shrink)

In Kingdom and Glory, Agamben analyzed the dual perspective of the void, through the metaphor of the empty throne, in the governmental machine in the West. I engage with the ambiguous question of the void with regard to the concept of sovereignty through my reading of two Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing period, Liang Qichao (1872–1929) and Zhang Taiyan (1869–1936). This paper therefore addresses the question of sovereignty and the void in the discourse of nation in early modern China, (...) an issue that is related to the problem of the political economy or the politics of life. I argue that the rhetorical move in Liang Qichao’s argument for the birth of a new nation and new people was to move from the not-having (無) to the there is (有) in support of the formation of a new nation-state and a restricted logic of sovereignty, while Zhan Taiyan’s position was to affirm the dynamitic re-composition of the void by constantly negating the given fixated state, and thus proposing a different and radical vision of nation and full sovereignty of the lives of each and every one of the people who are co-inhabiting in the polis. (shrink)

Past research suggests that people process verbal quantifiers differently from numerical ones, but this suggestion has yet to be formally tested. Drawing from traditional correlates of dual-process...

Context: There is still no detailed defence of Goodman’s starmaking constructivism against the objection Boghossian presented in his 2006 book, Fear of Knowledge. Problem: I defend Goodman’s constructivism against the problem of stuff raised by Boghossian, that is, that constructivism requires unconstructed stuff and thus cannot explain all features in the world. Method: I argue that there is a way out for constructivists when they face the problem of stuff. Constructivists can choose to accept a constructivist-friendly worldview and the problem (...) of stuff does not hold in this worldview. Goodman already provides hints for such a worldview in his works. I articulate the worldview in detail and argue that it does not have obvious faults. Results: I show that starmaking constructivism does not have the problem of stuff at least under a certain tenable worldview. Implications: The constructivist-friendly worldview and related novel ideas could be used to defend starmaking constructivism against other objections in Boghossian’s book and is helpful in answering other philosophical questions such as the mind-matter problem and modality. Constructivist content: This article may contribute to reviving Goodman’s starmaking constructivism. (shrink)

The constructivist worldview divides all features in the world into purported external properties and the totality of experience and argues that they are all constructed. The constructivist worldview can also answer the problem of time and explain how the construction chain comes from nothing. Compared with the realist worldview, the constructivist worldview has multiple advantages.

This article argues that while ethical leadership in mainstream theorising is assumed to be a cognitive exercise, leaders’ bodies in fact play a significant role in the social construction of ethical leadership. Their bodies become particularly potent when leaders are depicted via the interplay between visual and verbal modes in the media. In order to extend current understandings of ethical leadership, this study employs a discourse analytic approach to examine how visual and verbal devices convey ethical leadership for two of (...) Australia’s major bank chief executive officers—John Stewart and Ralph Norris—before and during the global financial crisis. Based on the analysis, this article demonstrates that ethical leadership is constructed through the confluence of elite and working class masculinities that is multimodally embodied and disembodied. The article suggests that what it means to be an ethical leader is invariably informed by class-based patriarchal norms that can serve to reinforce the masculinisation of ethics. (shrink)

Research into innovative behavior is not new, but its importance for organizational effectiveness has become even more evident in recent years. However, the psychological processes and underlying mechanism concerning how and why innovative behavior occurs within an organization still invite more investigation. The present study considers ambidextrous organizational culture as a pro-innovation culture and proposes that it can be perceived by employees, which leads to their innovative behavior. This study adds clarity by exploring the impact of perceived ambidextrous organizational culture (...) on employees’ reactions related to innovation via the intermediate mechanism of psychological empowerment and the moderating condition of transformational leadership. Hypotheses are derived from a motivational perspective based on self-determination theory. Results are based on data collected from 647 Chinese employee-supervisor dyads. This study finds that employees’ perceptions of ambidextrous organizational culture have an indirect effect on innovative behavior through psychological empowerment. Specifically, the positive indirect relationship is amplified when transformational leadership is at a higher level. Our findings show how the mediating mechanism of psychological empowerment and the moderating condition of transformational leadership work together to improve innovation by individuals. The findings reveal several ways in which organizations can strategically focus on their cultural and supervisory training, such as applying this model to improve employees’ outcome related to innovation. (shrink)

Philanthropic giving among leaders is often assumed to be an expression of ethical leadership in both academic and media discourses; however, this assumption can overlook the ways in which philanthropy produces and is underpinned by inequality. In order to extend current understandings of ethical leadership, this study employs a critical discourse analytic approach to examine how the link between philanthropy and ethical forms of leadership is verbally and visually constructed in the media. Based on the analysis, the article demonstrates how (...) the construction of Australian philanthropists as ethical leaders is achieved through their representation via three paradoxical identities: Aristocratic Battlers; Caring Controllers; and Publicity-Shy Celebrities. These discourses are mediated by Australian cultural norms and serve to conceal yet ultimately reinforce social and economic inequality. The article proposes that a critical discursive approach to understanding leadership ethics can help to explore the hidden or adverse effects of ostensibly ethical practices. (shrink)

While respect for persons is fundamental to many moral and political theories, its nature and ground remain controversial. According to the standard model of respect, respect is primarily a response to certain inherent features of a person or an object. Importantly, it is in virtue of the value, status or authority of those features that respect is justified or owed. This model, however, faces many serious challenges. Drawing on the classical Confucian notion of jing, I develop an alternative model of (...) respect, which construes respect as an expression of agent’s sense of the self and its place in the world. The emphasis is thus on the agent’s own self-conception and the corresponding attitudes and dispositions, as opposed to on inherent features of the objects of respect. To further illustrate this distinction, I contrast the traditional Kantian conception of respect for persons with the Confucian, jing-based, conception along three dimensions: the normative ground, the content, and the distribution of respect. The Kantian respect certainly has its merits, and perhaps is indispensable in some contexts, but there is much more to respect than what Kantians can offer. The Confucian conception of respect, on the other hand, has important theoretical and practical values such that it is essential to an adequate understanding of the role of respect in our moral and political life. (shrink)

To demonstrate how green innovation effectively occurs, this study examines the effects of green intellectual capital on GI from the perspective of green supply chain integration. Based on a natural-resource-based view and knowledge-based view, the authors constructed an intermediary model of GIC-GSCI-GI, and analyzed the effects of green absorptive ability and relationship learning ability as moderators. An empirical survey of 328 Chinese manufacturing companies was conducted. Our results indicate that three dimensions of GIC positively impact GI. The mediating effects of (...) internal and external GSCI exist in the relationship between GIC and GI. The moderating effects of GAA and RLA in these effects were also verified. Our study provides further empirical evidence for the relationship between GIC and GI, highlights the effects of companies’ internal and external abilities on GI, and suggests new ways and implementation contexts for GI. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created enormous challenges for organizations and employees. Due to the effectiveness of idiosyncratic deals in management practices, more and more organizations use this human resource management tool to address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, whether there are potential risks or negative effects of i-deals in the COVID-19 pandemic environment is not very clear. Drawing upon social cognitive theory, we proposed that i-deals may foment focal employees’ unethical behavior by triggering their hubristic pride, and (...) such process may be moderated by their trait of grandiose narcissism. We conducted a survey during the COVID-19 outbreak and tested our hypotheses with 492 samples from Shandong Province, China. Consistent with predictions, we found a positive relationship between i-deals and hubristic pride, which, in turn, increased their unethical behavior. And the relationship between i-deals and unethical behavior was mediated by hubristic pride. Furthermore, grandiose narcissism strengthened the positive relationship between i-deals and hubristic pride, as well as the indirect effect of i-deals on unethical behavior via hubristic pride. Our findings contributed to the literature on i-deals and provided guidance for organizations to address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)