Social capital can serve as informal governance in weak investor-protection regimes. Using hand-collected data on entrepreneurs’ political connections and firm ownership, we construct several original measures of social capital and examine their effect on the performance of entrepreneurial firms in China after their initial public offerings. Political connections or a high percentage of external investors tend to enhance firm performance, but intragroup related-party transactions commonly lead to performance decline. These forms of social capital have a strong influence on the performance (...) of Chinese firms, whereas formal governance variables such as board size or board independence have little effect. Although social capital may serve as an informal governance mechanism and effectively substitute for formal governance mechanisms in an emerging market, this role of social capital raises several ethical concerns, notably the development of rent-seeking and crony capitalism. (shrink)

What drives managerial perks? The commonly accepted view of perks suggests that they are a misuse of firm resources for managers’ private benefit, and thus perk consumption is unethical. However, an alternative view argues that perks can motivate managers to work hard and thus add to the value of the firm : from this perspective, perk consumption is an ethical form of behavior. The fundamental difference between the two positions has critical implications for practice, and this article tests these competing (...) views to determine the circumstances in which one view dominates the other. Using hand-collected data on perks in Chinese-listed companies, we find strong empirical support for the incentive view, which is more likely to be held in firms with moderate ownership concentration. This article not only contributes to the literature on business ethics, but also has critical implications for managerial incentive practices in emerging economies. (shrink)

本书紧扣《论语》的文本,分析了《论语》中孔子的思想观念,力图呈现孔子的思想特质。.

E-commerce research usually focuses more on how to protect consumers’ rights and increase their purchase intention from the perspective of consumers. However, we still lack understanding of e-commerce sellers, especially cross-border e-commerce sellers. Based on the stimulus-body-response theory, this paper built a moderated mediation model to test the relationships among social support, perceived benefits, perceived usefulness and sellers’ willingness to retain. The results show that social support has a positive impact on perceived benefits and sellers’ willingness to retain; perceived benefits (...) play a partial intermediary role between social support and sellers’ willingness to retain; and perceived usefulness moderates these mediating effects. The research results further expand the perspective of e-commerce research and reveal the mechanism and boundary conditions of the influence of social support on the retention willingness of cross-border e-commerce sellers. (shrink)

Despite considerable disruption of social order caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has also been said to contribute to positive psychological changes and influence on the perception of public life satisfaction. The present study aimed to explore the association between the COVID-19 related posttraumatic growth and life satisfaction and the mediating role of personal values. A two-wave longitudinal design was used. 226 self-quarantined Chinese college students completed post traumatic growth inventory, satisfaction with life scale, personal values questionnaire between February 2020 (...) and May 2021. Results showed that more than half of self-quarantined Chinese college students reported moderate to high levels of the COVID-19 related posttraumatic growth. A structural equation model revealed that COVID-19 related posttraumatic growth was positively associated to life satisfaction, and self-transcendence and self-enhancement values partially mediated this association. These findings shed light on whether and how pandemic-related posttraumatic growth influenced personal life satisfaction, supporting the outcome and process perspectives of posttraumatic growth as well as Schwartz’s value theory. Based on the findings, some positive psychology interventions, such as online rumination activities and mindfulness practice, were proposed to enhance self-quarantined college students’ posttraumatic growth and life satisfaction. (shrink)

Autobiography and Teacher Development in China investigates the roles of autobiography in teacher education, as several scholars in China recontextualize Western conceptions of teacher development, combining them with uniquely Chinese cultural conceptions to articulate a reconceptualization of teacher development that holds worldwide significance. Framed by the work of Zhang Hua and William F. Pinar, these theoretical and practical essays point to an internationally inflected reconceptualization of teachers' professional development, pre-service and in-service. This volume addresses multiple movements of teacher education reform (...) worldwide, focused on crafting a nationally distinctive course not only internationally, but also culturally, historically, and locally. (shrink)

This paper proposes an integral sliding mode control method of a class of uncertain chaotic systems with saturation inputs. Firstly, fuzzy logic system is used to estimate the unknown nonlinear function. Then, a disturbance observer is constructed to estimate a compound disturbance, which contains the external disturbance, the error of saturation input and control output, and the fuzzy estimation error. Subsequently, a proposed integral sliding mode controller can ensure that all signals of the closed-loop system are ultimately bounded, and based (...) on the dynamic system of the integral sliding mode variable itself, the ultimate bound of the tracking error can be estimated. Simulation results show that the proposed ISMC method is more effective than the traditional ISMC method. (shrink)

The financial market is a highly complex and dynamic system that has great commercial value; thus, many financial elite are drawn to research on the subject. Recent studies show that machine learning methods perform better than traditional statistical ones. In our study, based on the characteristics of financial sequence data, we propose a wrapped ensemble approach using a supervised learning algorithm to predict stock price volatility of China’s stock markets. To check our new approach, we developed an intelligent financial forecast (...) system and used the Hushen 300 index data to test our model; it proves that our model performs better than a single algorithm. We also compared our model with the famous ensemble approach of bagging, and the result shows that our model is better. (shrink)

Due to the epidemic, many offline educational institutions and even schools have begun to seek new teaching methods, and online teaching has become an important teaching method in this situation. Online teaching refers to the teaching mode in which teachers teach online through the Internet and students learn in online classrooms. Online teaching can reduce crowd contact between students and prevent the spread of the epidemic. However, due to the virtual nature of the Internet and the immaturity of the online (...) teaching system, the current online teaching method cannot be accepted by the majority of teachers and students. Therefore, this paper conducts a satisfaction survey on the psychological acceptance ability of students under the online teaching organization of English majors, aiming to understand the actual psychological burden brought by online teaching to students. The content of the questionnaire includes students' satisfaction with courses and teaching, satisfaction with teacher-student interaction, satisfaction with platforms and resources, satisfaction with teaching performance, and overall satisfaction. The survey results show that students' satisfaction with courses is generally above 4 points, while their satisfaction with teaching is generally lower, ranging from 3.65 to 3.94 points. Students' satisfaction with teacher-student interaction is not very high, around 3.75. Students' satisfaction with the teaching platform is higher than that of teachers, with a score of 4.05 or more. In terms of students' satisfaction with teaching performance, male students' satisfaction is above 4.45 points, while female students' satisfaction is 4.35 points. For overall satisfaction, male students scored above 4.45, while female students scored 4.35. Since the satisfaction in all aspects is higher than 3 points, it can be seen that most English majors are quite satisfied with the online teaching. (shrink)

Recent research on maintaining diversity in parallel problem solving takes into consideration only network structure, without considering the agents’ learning strategies. In this paper, we use a simulation study to extend March’s classic model by using locomotion and assessment as agents’ problem-solving strategies. First, we present a simulation framework that consists of external environment, communication networks, and agents’ learning strategies. Second, based on the framework, we develop March’s model to depict external environment. Third, we introduce four archetypical networks: a regular (...) network, a small-world network, a preferentially attached network, and a totally connected network as agents’ communication structure. Finally, we design three experiments to explore the performance implication of locomotors and assessors under different networks. Results suggest that network structure affects performance more than learning strategy. The more efficient the network is at diffusing knowledge, the better the performance in the short run but the worse in the long run. Locomotors can help keep diversity; a high proportion of locomotors’ team has a better final performance but need more equilibrium time. Furthermore, moderate composition among locomotors and assessors increases costly interaction uncertainty. We discuss the findings’ implications for the regulatory mode and problem-solving literature. (shrink)