Based on the conflict-of-values theory, this study examines the influences of Machiavellianism and ethical values on anxiety in college students when they face moral dilemmas. Questionnaires on the Chinese equivalent of Machiavellianism, moral identity, and anxiety were completed by 115 Chinese college students. The results suggest that Machiavellianism and ethical values influence anxiety, and the interaction between ethical values and Machiavellianism is significant—among individuals with high ethical values, those with high levels of Machiavellianism exhibit markedly higher levels of anxiety than (...) those with low levels of Machiavellianism. However, among individuals with low ethical values, there is no difference in anxiety between those with low or high levels of Machiavellianism. This research, depicting complex relationships among anxiety, Machiavellianism, and ethical values, suggests that leading people to do good deeds not only requires high ethical values but also necessitates the resistance to negative values such as Machiavellianism. (shrink)

We examine enforcement action in China’s emerging markets by focusing on the agents that impose this action and the role played by supervisory boards. Using newly available databases, we find that supervisory boards play an active role when Chinese listed companies face enforcement action. Listed firms with larger supervisory boards are more likely to have more severe sanctions imposed upon them by the China Security Regulatory Commission, and listed companies that face more severe enforcement actions have more supervisory board meetings. (...) Our findings are of interest, as supervisory boards in China are generally perceived to be dysfunctional. This study contributes to the existing literature in three ways. First, we shed light on the effects of supervisory boards whose role in a fraud setting has not yet been examined. Second, the study has important policy implications for governance reform. Finally, our analyses provide the most up-to-date picture of fraud and governance issues in China’s ever-growing markets. (shrink)

System justification theory holds that disadvantaged groups rationalize the current social system, even if it is unfavorable to them. Epistemic, relational, and existential needs are factors that explain this phenomenon. However, the literature has not yet examined and explained when disadvantaged groups no longer rationalize current social systems. This study uses a questionnaire survey method to study the moderating effect of collectivism on disadvantaged mindset and system-justifying beliefs. It found that collectivism can influence the predictive effect of disadvantaged mindset on (...) system-justifying beliefs. For people who scored low in collectivism, a disadvantaged mindset can significantly negatively predict system-justifying beliefs; for those who scored high in collectivism, a disadvantaged mindset no longer predicts system-justifying beliefs. Therefore, these results show that collectivist values are important for explaining system justification in disadvantaged groups. When collectivist values decline, the level of rationalization of the social system by disadvantaged groups also decreases. (shrink)

There are two contending models regarding the processing of negation: the fusion model and the schema-plus-tag model. Most previous studies have centered on negation in languages such as English and Mandarin, where negators are positioned before predicates. Mongolian, quite uniquely, is a language whose negators are post-verbal, making them natural replicas of the schema-plus-tag model. The present study aims to investigate the representation process of Mongolian contradictory negative sentences to shed light on the debate between the models, meanwhile verifying the (...) post-verbal effect of negators. A series of experiments using the sentence–picture verification paradigm supports the fusion model: Mongolian contradictory negative sentences were processed by representing the actual conditions rather than the negated state of affairs at 250 ISI, and despite the fact that a post-verbal effect of negators was measured at 250 ISI when Mongolian and Mandarin negative sentences were compared, Mongolian–Mandarin bilinguals adopted the same representational strategy for contradictory negation in both languages. (shrink)

We examine the dynamics between enforcement actions and the responses from both the board of directors and supervisory boards amid China's governance reform. Rather than examining determinants of fraudulent activities, we investigate, after enforcement actions are imposed, whether the board of directors and supervisory boards react differently, and whether their different reactions play a role in preventing future occurrences of frauds. We find that both boards react to enforcement actions, but only the responses from the board of directors help us (...) curb future enforcements under certain circumstances. The supervisory board fails to play any role in preventing future enforcements, even though it is one of the two monitoring mechanisms in the listed companies. Policy implications are discussed. (shrink)

I describe some interpretive strategies used by physicists in the development of quantum electrodynamics in the 1930s and 1940s, using Wimsatt's account of how to reason with false models as a guide. I call these “interpretive” strategies because they were used not just to derive empirical predictions, but also to derive information about the world besides the aforementioned predictions. These strategies were regarded as mathematically unrigorous, yet they were crucial to the development of a better theory of quantum electrodynamics. I (...) argue that these strategies are not easily assimilated into conventional axiomatic, deductivist views of what theories tell us about the world. Furthermore, it is unclear if these strategies are necessarily less reliable than strategies based solely on mathematically rigorous inferences. I suggest that these less than fully rigorous strategies are worth considering as general strategies for working with theories in physics. (shrink)

This study aims to identify the influence of knowledge management practices on the entrepreneurial and organizational performance with the mediating effect of dynamic capabilities and moderating role of opportunity recognition. Data were gathered from 486 entrepreneurs and applied a structural equation model to test the hypotheses. We found that knowledge management practices have a positive and significant influence on dynamic capabilities, as well as have a significant impact on entrepreneurial and organizational performance. Moreover, results indicated that dynamic capabilities partially mediate (...) in the relationship between knowledge management practices on entrepreneurial and organizational performance. Furthermore, the relationship between knowledge management practices with entrepreneurial and organizational performance strengthening by opportunity recognition. Further, implications and limitations were discussed in the paper. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural semiotics will systematically change the present-day academic compartmentalization, especially impacting the constitutionof historiography. Emphasizing the distinction between reality and discourse this paper suggests a new historiographic view based on documents-centrism rather than periodical division. Then historians can more reasonably reach historical truth in a hermeneutic term. Following a semiotic rereading of a modern Chinese historical school Gu-Shi-Bian (textual criticism of historical literature), a more serious comparative historical theory will be established in the global humanities. This modern critical (...) Chinese historiography will be instructive to the development of historical science in the world. (shrink)

Within some online communities, discussion often centers on issues on which writers take sides, and within some subset of those debate-prone communities, we find over time that particular sets of writers almost always end up on the same side of an issue. These sets we call factions. In this paper, we describe a tool to perform what we call faction discovery on online communities. Generalizing methods developed in the bibliometrics and information retrieval literature, we define a network determined by similarities (...) of content in a community of users and add in direct evidence of online ties between users. We then perform community detection on the network to find factions. Using a set of data collected from science and fantasy blogs, we show that the discovered factions accurately reflect an active conflict in the community leading to significant, politically related social fracture. (shrink)

As environmental issues have become increasingly prominent around the world, corporate environmental responsibility has begun to attract more attention. As the decision-makers of firms, top executives play an important role in the environmentally ethical behavior of their corporations. Few studies, however, have explored the motivations behind corporations’ environmentally responsible behavior from the perspective of how CEOs’ early experiences shape their decisions. This paper explores the impact that CEOs who experienced the Send-down movement have on their companies’ environmentally responsible behavior and (...) the boundary conditions of this impact from the perspective of the imprinting theory. Based on the data of listed Chinese companies from 2009 to 2020, we have found that CEOs who were themselves “Sent-down youth” have a positive impact on corporate environmental responsibility. For firms with a higher proportion of state ownership and CEOs with Chinese Communist Party membership, the relationship between experience with the Send-down movement and corporate environmental responsibility is strengthened, whereas a higher level of market competition weakens the relationship. This article enriches and deepens the research on the imprinting theory, and it also has certain practical implications for firms that hire top executives with unique types of early experiences to promote business ethics improvement. (shrink)

"There is no purely and rigorously phonetic writing,"2 proclaims Jacques Derrida as he coins the term différance. The a in différance is not audible; the difference is purely graphic, and when expressed orally the hearer understands différence whether it is written with an e or an a. But Derrida is working in French, and while it is clear that French is not purely and rigorously phonetic in its writing, this does not necessarily hold for other languages or linguistic scripts, nor (...) does the silence of différance necessarily survive translation. Moreover, especially if one considers Derrida's more generalized definition of "writing"—not only as marks on a surface, but as a sign system—then a natural counter-example of... (shrink)

Trust is a natural mechanism by which an autonomous party, an agent, can deal with the inherent uncertainty regarding the behaviours of other parties and the uncertainty in the information it shares with those parties. Trust is thus crucial in any decentralised system. This paper builds on recent efforts to use argumentation to reason about trust. Specifically, a set of schemes is provided, and abstract patterns of reasoning that apply in multiple situations geared towards trust. Schemes are described in which (...) one agent, A, can establish arguments for trusting another agent, B, directly, as well as schemes that A can use to construct arguments for trusting C, where C is trusted by B. For both sets of schemes, a set of critical questions is offered that identify the situations in which these schemes can fail. (shrink)

There is a high need for cognition on earthquake risk to improve the public’s risk knowledge and risk awareness, so that they can make right decisions and take quick actions regarding mitigation measures and adjustments. In this study, search engine query data from the Baidu Index were extracted to reveal the information search behaviors of the Chinese public regarding the earthquake risk from 2010 to 2012. The data were also analyzed to discuss the characteristics of need for cognition on a (...) nationwide scale and over the long term. The results showed that graphic representations of need for cognition adhere to a “half-peak pattern” before and after earthquake events and dimensions in psychological distance theory, such as temporal distance, spatial distance, and social distance influence the need for cognition on earthquake risk that was the time and spatial discount effect. The implications for theory and practice regarding risk communication and management are discussed and concluded. (shrink)

Comparative study of Sikh and Christian ethics.

Editor’s AbstractTaiwanese Confucian Li Minghui is the best-known contemporary voice of New Confucianism. This is a published, edited transcript of an oral interview, so the style is somewhat informal, lively, even emotional. The first part of the interview primarily concerns the continued relevance of Confucianism in Taiwan, while the second focuses in part on Li's views of “Mainland New Confucianism.”.

When asked why we are friends with someone, we often point to her good virtues as reasons. If these are the reasons, we have equal reasons to be friends with anyone with such virtues, and we can even replace current friends with anyone with the same or better virtues without substantive loss in friendship. However, it does not seem right that a particular friend is replaceable by just any other person with the same or better virtues. This is the fungibility (...) problem of friendship. This essay outlines a Confucian response to the problem on the basis of the Confucian family-based conception of friendship and the Confucian understanding of particularized virtues. First, in the Confucian understanding, true friends are like family members, toward whom we have special obligations. Family members are nonfungible, and so are friends. Second, even though virtues are general traits that can be shared, the formations and practices of virtues are particularized. Confucian thinkers hold that each person configures virtues and exercises virtues in his or her own way depending on specific circumstances, and that persons with the same virtues may nevertheless possess them in varied fashions and exercise different shades of them in particular ways. Thus, persons of the same generic virtues will still retain their particularities as distinctive individuals. We become friends and remain friends with people in part because of their virtues practiced in ways that we appreciate. This notion of particularly exercised virtues makes it practically impossible for two persons to be identical in virtues. On such an understanding, virtuous friends are nevertheless unique and nonfungible. (shrink)

The current president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, is an outstanding thinker of our times. He first became famous as a dramatist, then later became a prominent dissident and philosopher; and, following a series of revolutions in Czechoslovakia and other Central European states after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he was elected president of the Czech Republic, [a post that] he has now [held] for nine years.

Research productivity is an important criterion for the university to assess teachers. Studies about factors that affect teachers’ research productivity are increasing nowadays. It is generally agreed that academics’ research productivity depends on how much mentorship is provided to them and how the current working environment is mediated by their research motivation and self-efficacy. Despite the increasing amount of the literature along this line, we know little about what kinds of situations that Chinese university English as a foreign language (EFL) (...) teachers are in and how they regard the importance of mentorship and what roles their working environments would play in affecting their research productivity. To fill the research gap, we utilized the snowball method to collect the survey data from 546 Chinese EFL tertiary teachers. The results show that mentorship is not correlated with research productivity while the working environment has a positive direct correlation with it. Both motivation and self-efficacy mediate the working environment and research productivity significantly. Specifically, only extrinsic motivation has a negative mediation influence on teachers’ research productivity; teachers’ intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy play a positive mediation role in affecting their research productivity. (shrink)

China's domestic labor market has limited demand for tertiary graduates due to an unbalanced industrial structure, with a weak contribution to economic performance over the past decade. This study estimates the asymmetric effects of higher education progress (highly educated employed workforce), higher education utilization (highly educated unemployed workforce), and the separate effects of higher education utilization interactions with high-tech industries on economic growth in China from 1980 to 2020. Using a Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model, this study finds that (...) the expansion of higher education progress (the employed workforce with higher education) promotes economic growth, while contraction of higher education progress (employed workforce with higher education) reduces economic growth. Likewise, an increase in higher education utilization (the unemployed labor force with higher education) suppresses economic growth, while a decline in the higher education utilization (the unemployed labor force with higher education) promotes economic growth. The study also found that the expansion of high-tech industries and government spending on education significantly stimulate economic growth. The moderating role of higher education utilization (unemployed labor force with higher education) in the impact of high-tech industries on economic growth is significantly positive. This study strategically proposes that China's higher-educated unemployed labor force can be adjusted to high-tech industries, which need to be developed equally in all regions. Moreover, the country is required to invest more in higher education and the development of high technological industries across all regions, thus may lead to higher economic growth. (shrink)

In his feature article,1 McCullough LB et al highlights the importance of civility among medical educators and academic leaders in shaping the professional habits of junior doctors. He emphasises the role of medical educators in correcting unprofessional behaviour and emphasises the need for academic leaders to motivate junior doctors to develop virtuous professional habits. The relationship between junior doctors and medical educators can be likened to that between students and teachers. Through active or passive learning from medical educators, junior doctors (...) gain the necessary knowledge, experience and professional virtues. Academic leaders, as prominent experts in their field, play a guiding role in this process. Therefore, their relationship with junior doctors is akin to that between idols and fans. In this regard, academic leaders can serve as exceptional role models for guiding junior doctors to develop the inclination to …. (shrink)

With the prevalence of traceability technology in the turbulent Internet age, traceable food has become an important tool in addressing food safety issues. Under the combined effect of frequent food safety problems and sustainable development of traceability industry, the research on traceable food consumer behavior has become more extensive. However, it is still not fully understood how the multiple information brought by traceability affects consumers’ purchase decision. This study proposes the effects of traceability knowledge, traceable information quality and traceable certification (...) credibility on traceable food purchase intention via the mediation of perceived risk and perceived value, and integrates the moderating effect of peer influence in the context of Internet age into a research framework. The analytical results indicate that traceability knowledge, traceable information quality, and traceability certification credibility indirectly affect consumers’ traceable food purchase intention through perceived risk and perceived value, while traceability knowledge, perceived risk, and perceived value directly affect “traceable food purchase intention.” Furthermore, peer influence was found to be a significant moderator in the relationship between perceived risk and “traceable food purchase intention.” Finally, based on the research results, traceability companies are suggested to focus on cultivating the traceable consumption habits. Meanwhile, although traceable food quality is the top priority, companies should also attach importance to the communication and interaction with consumer. (shrink)

This study examines the effectiveness of the inoculation strategy in countering vaccine-related misinformation among Hong Kong college students. A three-phase between-subject experiment was conducted to compare the persuasive effects of inoculation messages, supportive messages, and no message control. The results show that inoculation messages were superior to supportive messages at generating resistance to misinformation, as evidenced by more positive vaccine attitudes and stronger vaccine intention. Notably, while we expected the inoculation condition would produce more resistance than the control condition, there (...) was little evidence in favor of this prediction. Attitudinal threat and counterarguing moderated the experimental effects; issue involvement and political trust were found to directly predict vaccine attitudes and intention. The findings suggest that future interventions focus on developing preventive mechanisms to counter misinformation and spreading inoculation over the issue is an effective strategy to generate resistance to misinformation. Interventions should be cautious about using health advocacy initiated by governments among populations with low political trust. (shrink)

Samuel P. Huntington asserts that the world is now entering an age of “the clash of civilizations.” Specifically, the clash is between democratic Western civilization and undemocratic civilizations in the rest of the world, Confucian and Islamic civilizations in particular. Huntington also suggests that in order for democracy to take roots in a Confucian society, undemocratic elements in Confucianism must be superseded by democratic elements. The purpose of this essay is to examine the future relationship between democracy and Confucianism in (...) the part of the world where they are most likely to clash, namely, China. (shrink)