Promoting innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing has become essential as it endows companies with competitive advantages to thrive in today's complex business environment. This study investigates the role of workplace spirituality in inducing innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing based on the social exchange theory and the spillover theory. It also looks at the previously unexplored mediating function of employee engagement in the relationship between workplace spirituality and the outcomes above. Additionally, it examines the interactive effect of workplace spirituality (...) and individual spirituality on employee engagement. Two waves of survey data were collected from 538 employees and their managers working in the IT sector in Pakistan. This study contributes to the expanding corpus of research on workplace spirituality, confirming that the latter positively influence innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing. The mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between workplace spirituality and innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing is also significant. Further, the results confirm that the influence of workplace spirituality on employee engagement is contingent on the degree of individual spirituality. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Social distance, as a non-static cognitive attribute of acceptance among particular groups across different contexts, has been resemioticized during the coronavirus crisis and legalized worldwide to reduce global strain on healthcare systems and prevent deaths. Concerning this, brand designers have tried to persuade the brand community to benefit from products or services safely by staying away from others as much as possible instead of in-person contact. This research was conducted to discover the semiosis process of social-distancing resemioticization through creating values (...) of brands during the post-coronavirus crisis. The corpus consists of 124 brands – all sampled purposely from 2019 to 2021 – which was investigated via a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods using an integrated model in a functional perspective. All the results highlight the fact that, although brand designers have attempted to creatively resemioticize social-distancing during the coronavirus crisis as a means of increasing or enriching brand values, still some semiosis layers of brand discourse have been overlooked. Pertaining to this, the authors try to apply a new perspective of marketing semiotics to appraise consumer investments in light of a socio-cultural setting by conducting an inquiry about the semiosis of individual brand discourses to manage consumer perceptions regarding brand equity. (shrink)

This paper investigates simple syntactic methods for revising prioritized belief bases, that are semantically meaningful in the frameworks of possibility theory and of Spohn''s ordinal conditional functions. Here, revising prioritized belief bases amounts to conditioning a distribution function on interpretations. The input information leading to the revision of a knowledge base can be sure or uncertain. Different types of scales for priorities are allowed: finite vs. infinite, numerical vs. ordinal. Syntactic revision is envisaged here as a process which transforms a (...) prioritized belief bases into a new prioritized belief base, and thus allows a subsequent iteration. (shrink)

Dans ce livre jubilatoire, Jean Salem développe une approche originale sur la question qui fait recette aujourd'hui dans les librairies, dans les gazettes, dans les sectes, chez les spirites et dans tous les endroits où l'on cause : pouvons-nous espérer le bonheur quand même? le bonheur est-il praticable, jusqu'en ces temps de catastrophe? avons-nous seulement le droit de prétendre à jouir d'un tel luxe quand l'horizon paraît bouché et que le sol semble s'enfoncer sous nos pieds? quand il n'y (...) a plus d'horizon. Ce livre rompt avec l'idéologie du bonheur individuel, du bonheur New Age, du bonheur " guimauve " et désengagé, induit par la société de consommation. On y entend parler non seulement du souverain bien des Anciens, mais aussi du bonheur d'agir, de résister, en un mot : du bonheur de lutter. Dans un style enlevé, drôle et polémique, Jean Salem mène son enquête au sujet du bonheur : " sur ce qui en a été dit par quelques bons esprits du passé, et sur les moyens de ne pas le manquer tout à fait en un temps d'inquiétude et de catastrophe. ". (shrink)

The general notion of relative freedom is introduced. It is a kind of freedom that is observed everywhere in nature. In biology, incomplete knowledge is defined for all organisms. They cope with the problem by Popper’s trial-and-error processes. One source of their success is the relative freedom of choice from the basic option ranges: mutations, motions and neuron connections. After the conjecture is adopted that communicability can be used as a criterion of consciousness, free will is defined as a conscious (...) version of relative freedom. The resulting notion is logically self-consistent and it describes an observable phenomenon that agrees with our experience. (shrink)

Tel un dieu parmi les hommes... Ainsi Epicure decrit-il le bienheureux etat qu'il promet a Menecee, son disciple. Et qu'il promet aussi a tous ceux qui auront pris le soin de s'adonner, en temps utile, a l'etude de la vraie doctrine. Car la vie, d'ordinaire, perit par le delai, et chacun de nous meurt affaire. Selon le sage du Jardin, seules des certitudes irrecusables, touchant a la constitution physique du tout, peuvent nous delivrer de la crainte du sujet de la (...) mort et des dieux. Seule la science du mouvement eternel des atomes errant dans le vide infini peut annihiler la douleur de l'ame et laisser advenir en nous la souveraine felicite, la joie de vivre dont temoignent les enfants et les betes, le divin plaisir qui constitue la trame de notre etre. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from social learning and social cognitive perspectives and research on the multilevel reality of leadership influences, we developed and tested a multilevel model that examines mechanisms and conditions through which ethical leadership deters work unit- and individual-level ostracism. Based on two field studies using multiple measurement points, we found that at the work unit level of analysis, relational climate partially mediates the negative relationship between ethical leadership and work unit-level ostracism whereas state mindfulness partially mediates the cross-level (...) influence of ethical leadership on individual-level ostracism. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that the relationship between ethical leadership and relational climate was stronger when work units had a more mechanistic structure, and not when it had an organic work unit structure. Finally, we found that relational climate not only moderates the relationship between state mindfulness and individual-level ostracism, but also moderates the indirect influence of ethical leadership on individual-level ostracism through state mindfulness such that the indirect effect is stronger when relational climate is high as opposed to low. These findings highlight the individual- and work unit-level conditions and mechanisms through which ethical leadership relates to decreased ostracism at work, and thus extends theory and research on ethical leadership and ostracism. (shrink)

The two-volume set LNCS 10350 and 10351 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2017, held in Arras, France, in June 2017. The 70 revised full papers presented together with 45 short papers and 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 180 submissions. They are organized in topical sections: constraints, planning, and optimization; data mining and machine learning; sensors, signal processing, and data fusion; recommender (...) systems; decision support systems; knowledge representation and reasoning; navigation, control, and autonome agents; sentiment analysis and social media; games, computer vision; and animation; uncertainty management; graphical models: from theory to applications; anomaly detection; agronomy and artificial intelligence; applications of argumentation; intelligent systems in healthcare and mhealth for health outcomes; and innovative applications of textual analysis based on AI. (shrink)

Face perception is crucial in all social animals. Recent studies have shown that pre-stimulus oscillations of brain activity modulate the perceptual performance of face vs. non-face stimuli, specifically under challenging conditions. However, it is unclear if this effect also occurs during simple tasks, and if so in which brain regions. Here we used magnetoencephalography and a 1-back task in which participants decided if the two sequentially presented stimuli were the same or not in each trial. The aim of the study (...) was to explore the effect of pre-stimulus alpha oscillation on the perception of face and non-face stimuli. Our results showed that pre-stimulus activity in the left occipital face area modulated responses in the intra-parietal sulcus at around 170 ms after the presentation of human face stimuli. This effect was also found after participants were shown images of motorcycles. In this case, the IPS was modulated by pre-stimulus activity in the right OFA and the right fusiform face area. We conclude that pre-stimulus modulation of post-stimulus response also occurs during simple tasks and is therefore independent of behavioral responses. (shrink)

. This paper first provides a brief survey of a possibilistic handling of default rules. A set of default rules of the form, “generally, from α deduce β”, is viewed as the family of possibility distributions satisfying constraints expressing that the situation where α and β is true has a greater plausibility than the one where a and - β is true. When considering only the subset of linear possibility distributions, the well-known System P of postulates proposed by Kraus, Lehmann (...) and Magidor, has been obtained. We also present two rational extensions: one based on the minimum specificity principle and the other is based on the lexicographic ordering. The second part of the paper presents an empirical study of three desirable properties for a consequence relation that capture default reasoning: Rationality, Property Inheritance and Ambiguity Preservation. An experiment is conducted to investigate 13 patterns of inference for the test of these properties. Our experimental apparatus confirms previous results on the relevance of System P, and enforces the psychological relevance of the studied properties. (shrink)

The main objective of this paper was to examine the involuntary nature of music-evoked autobiographical memories. For this purpose, young adults, older adults, and patients with a clinical diagnosis of probable Alzheimer’s disease were asked to remember autobiographical events in two conditions: after being exposed to their own chosen music, and in silence. Compared to memories evoked in silence, memories evoked in the “Music” condition were found to be more specific, accompanied by more emotional content and impact on mood, and (...) retrieved faster. In addition, these memories engaged less executive processes. Thus, with all these characteristics and the fact that they are activated by a perceptual cue , music-evoked autobiographic memories have all the features to be considered as involuntary memories. Our paper reveals several characteristics of music-evoked autobiographical memories in AD patients and offers a theoretical background for this phenomenon. (shrink)

This article addresses the Egyptian women's movement of the 1950s–1970s through a recent film entitled Four Women of Egypt, which focuses on the lives of four prominent Egyptian women active in the movement during that period. Using the concept of political memory, the article traces some of the major debates within the women's movement throughout this era. By focusing on the ways in which these women conceptualize the geopolitical, I show that the twin concepts of imperialism and capitalism were central (...) to the ways in which they understood gender. The result was a complex understanding of how gender intersected with Egypt's position within a broader global system of imperial capitalism. Following the transition in the 1970s to an open-market economy, the women's movement shifted away from critiques of imperialism and capitalism. This shift can be understood Primarily in terms of geopolitics, specifically the rise of neoliberalism in Egypt. New neoliberal policies had dramatic effects on the women's movement, showing why both the rise and fall of the movement must be contextualized geopolitically and transnationally. (shrink)

In the past decade, the use of the Chapter XI has soared to the detriment of many creditors, workers, and consumers. A good number of cases were not based on imminent insolvency, but on firms attempts to avoid litigation claims against them, to terminate labor or other contractual obligations, or to gain new financing.These filings for Chapter XI highlight the use of bank-ruptcy as a strategic option used by management in running a viable organization. This usage is even advised by (...) some academics and management consultants. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses several methods for reasoning from inconsistent knowledge bases. A so-called argued consequence relation, taking into account the existence of consistent arguments in favour of a conclusion and the absence of consistent arguments in favour of its contrary, is particularly investigated. Flat knowledge bases, i.e., without any priority between their elements, are studied under different inconsistency-tolerant consequence relations, namely the so-called argumentative, free, universal, existential, cardinality-based, and paraconsistent consequence relations. The syntax-sensitivity of these consequence relations is (...) studied. A companion paper is devoted to the case where priorities exist between the pieces of information in the knowledge base. (shrink)

Recent studies from Western countries indicate significant levels of questionable research practices, but similar data from low and middle-income countries are limited. Our aims were to assess the prevalence of and attitudes regarding research misconduct among researchers in several universities in the Middle East and to identify factors that might account for our findings. We distributed an anonymous questionnaire to a convenience sample of investigators at several universities in Egypt, Lebanon, and Bahrain. Participants were asked to a) self-report their extent (...) of research misconducts, as well as their knowledge of colleagues engaging in similar research misconducts and b) provide their extent of agreement with certain attitudes about research misconduct. We used descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression statistics to analyze the data. Data from 278 participants showed a high prevalence of misconduct, as 59.4% of our respondents self-reported to committing at least one misbehaviors and 74.5% reported having knowledge of any misbehaviors among any of their colleagues. The most common type of self-report misconduct was “circumventing research ethics regulations” followed by “fabrication and falsification”. A significant predictor of misconduct included a lack of “prior ethics training”. Scientific misconduct represents a significant issue in several universities in the Middle East. The demonstration that a lack of “prior ethics training” was a significant predictor of misconduct should lead to educational initiatives in research integrity. Further studies are needed to confirm whether our results can be generalized to other universities in the Middle East. (shrink)

Zakat is mandatory contribution in Islam. It is the command (Pherman) of Allah revealed in holy interaction/discourse of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) with Allah. Islam stands for social and economic solidarity among the followers of Islam. It seeks to provide the basic needs of the individual out of the Zakat contribution pool. For this study, the aim is to discuss the noble and holy idea of employing zakat funds. The employment of Zakat funds are permissible in certain forms and prohibited in (...) some. This distinction is made from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence. The study proceeded with this aim and reached the following results: (i) the employment of zakat funds is undoubtedly meant for helping the poor, disabled, destitute, and sick or orphaned individuals. (ii) Zakat has five forms in which Zakat funds are deployed/dispensed; (iii) Zakat funds take the form of investment; (iv) Zakat funds are meant to be spent in public interests; (v) Zakat funds are converted into endowments. The forms of spending (iii) and (v) are prohibited by some jurists. They contend that the permissible forms of fund-employment are: (a) providing a vocational tool (felicitation giving equipment such as tools, instruments or other things) to the needy; (b) establishing projects that benefit the poor as a privileged group/class. The study makes recommendation that Zakat controlling institutions should take care of employment of Zakat resources-pool/reservoir in providing jobs to the unemployed poor and others eligible as per Islamic philosophy and the provision of vocational tools, instruments or equipment so that the eligible poor skilled individuals are able to work more efficiently to earn their livelihood. (shrink)

The problem of merging multiple sources information is central in many information processing areas such as databases integrating problems, multiple criteria decision making, expert opinion pooling, etc. Recently, several approaches have been proposed to merge classical propositional bases, or sets of (non-prioritized) goals. These approaches are in general semantically defined. Like in belief revision, they use priorities, generally based on Dalal's distance, for merging the classical bases and return a new classical base as a result. An immediate consequence of the (...) generation of a classical base is the impossibility of iterating the fusion process in a coherent way w.r.t. priorities since the underlying ordering is lost. This paper presents a general approach for fusing prioritized bases, both semantically and syntactically, when priorities are represented in the possibilistic logic framework. Different classes of merging operators are considered including conjunctive, disjunctive, reinforcement and adaptive operators. We show that the approaches which have been recently proposed for merging classical propositional bases can be embedded in this setting. The result is then a prioritized base, and hence the process can be coherently iterated. Moreover, we also provide a syntactic counterpart for the fusion of classical bases. (shrink)

Although Heidegger's philosophical complicity with National Socialism has been the focus of virtually all discussions of his politics, little to no attention has been placed on how the conception of human existence developed in Being and Time might shed light on debates about the self between contemporary liberals and communitarians. By situating Heidegger's early work within these ongoing debates, the author will show how his descriptions of Dasein—especially the descriptions of the relationship between Dasein and its community—are actually more consistent (...) with liberal views of the self than with communitarian interpretations. Heidegger helps to clarify how a thickly constituted, social self may nevertheless stand back from its community in ways that communitarians are hard pressed to explain. In the final section, the author will comment on the compatibility of Heidegger's conception of Dasein with liberalism as a political philosophy, focusing in particular on Heidegger's conception of Mitsein or being-with. (shrink)

This paper first provides a brief survey of a possibilistic handling of default rules. A set of default rules of the form, "generally, from α deduce β", is viewed as the family of possibility distributions satisfying constraints expressing that the situation where α and β is true has a greater plausibility than the one where α and ⇁β is true. When considering only the subset of linear possibility distributions, the well-known System P of postulates proposed by Kraus, Lehmann and Magidor, (...) has been obtained. We also present two rational extensions: one based on the minimum specificity principle and the other is based on the lexicographic ordering. The second part of the paper presents an empirical study of three desirable properties for a consequence relation that capture default reasoning: Rationality, Property Inheritance and Ambiguity Preservation. An experiment is conducted to investigate 13 patterns of inference for the test of these properties. Our experimental apparatus confirms previous results on the relevance of System P, and enforces the psychological relevance of the studied properties. (shrink)

En dépit des réformes dites libérales des années 1860, l'Empire russe resta tout au long du XIX e siècle un empire dont le souverain s'intitulait officiellement : « Tsar et Autocrate de toutes les Russies ». L'autocratie différait fortement de la monarchie française d'Ancien Régime, qu'embarrassaient et que contenaient mille traditions et reliques du passé : droit coutumier et droit romain, vieilles lois de sources diverses toujours en vigueur, privilèges, prérogatives, immunités, franchises, exceptions et exemptions, Église indépendante, etc. Dans le (...) système russe du « césaropapisme », l'empereur faisait également office de souverain pontife de la religion orthodoxe : il en était le « défenseur et gardien ». - En 1881, le tsar Alexandre II fut tué dans un attentat, alors que l'octroi d'une Constitution semblait imrm'nent. Son règne avait été marqué par une série de réformes, dont la plus célèbre (1861) est celle qui avait émancipé les paysans serfs. Constantin Pétrovitch Pobedonostsev (1827-1907), célèbre juriste et homme d'État russe, qui avait été le précepteur des fils d'Alexandre II, va alors devenir le principal représentant d'une politique de contre-réformes, d'une politique refusant que soit faite la moindre concession aux idées libérales. Nommé par Alexandre III procureur du Saint-Synode, il exercera une influence prépondérante en Russie pendant la première partie du règne de ce tsar (c'està-dire de 1881 à 1887). Certains de ses écrits, pamphlets ou manifestes ont été réunis dans un Recueil de Moscou, paru en 1896. Nous y verrons Pobedonostsev dénoncer une à une toutes les institutions qui pourraient, si jamais elles étaient importées d'Occident, limiter les prérogatives du tsar autocrate : séparation de l'Église et de l'État ; suffrage universel et discours sur la prétendue souveraineté du peuple ; instruction gratuite et obligatoire, impliquant une limitation du travail des enfants ; liberté de la presse et invocation constante de l' « opinion publique » ; institution (à l'anglaise) de jurys populaires dans les tribunaux. - Mais nous aurons la surprise de trouver également, dans ce même Recueil de Moscou, un catalogue très raisonné des principales « pathologies » qui, selon Pobedonostsev, accompagnent nécessairement un régime de démocratie représentative : corruption des représentants ; combinaisons et tractations incessantes entre les partis ; indifférentisme massif et hypertrophie du moi personnel chez les électeurs ; omniprésence d'une presse dépourvue de tout mandat électif et parlant cependant au nom du public ; etc. Un tel catalogue constitue à n'en pas douter ce que l'œuvre de Pobedonostsev, ce réactionnaire « sur toute la ligne », contient de moins inactuel. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between urban culture and street vending. Prior research on this topic is limited and inconclusive. Therefore, we have proposed an integrated model to test the positive effect of urban culture on street vending using multiple mediations of consumption patterns, resistance, and microfinance. We tested a sample of 425 responses that reflect the public opinion in Baghdad, Iraq. These responses were collected between September and November 2018. A partial least squares–based structural equation modeling is employed to (...) test the validity of measurement models and the significance of the entire structural model, predictive power, and mediation analysis. We found that resistance mediates the effect of urban culture on street vending; low-income consumption and resistance sequentially mediate the effect of urban culture on street vending, while resistance mediates the effect of a lack of microfinance on street vending. The direct impact of culture on street vending is not significant, and a lack of microfinance positively influences the pervasiveness of trading on streets. This study contributes to the extant literature as it proposed and tested a novel and comprehensive model to analyze the relationship between urban culture and street vending, simultaneously examining the effects of culture, consumption, resistance, and microfinance on street vending. (shrink)