During the last two decades Confucian heritage culture countries have widely promoted teaching and learning reforms to advance their educational systems. To skip the painfully long research stage, Confucian heritage culture educators have borrowed Western philosophies and practices with the assumption that what has been done successfully in the West will produce similar outcomes in the East. The wide importation of cooperative learning practices to Confucian heritage culture classrooms recently is an example. However, cooperative learning has been documented in many (...) studies not to work effectively in Confucian heritage culture classrooms. The reason is that the educators often impose this instructional method on the students without a careful consideration of its appropriateness in the socio-cultural context of Confucian heritage culture countries. This procedure is not effective and professional because learning does not stand alone. Rather, it is shaped and influenced by other factors including teaching methods, learning tasks, assessment demands, workload and the learning culture of students in the local context. For cooperative learning to work effectively in Confucian heritage culture classrooms, reformers need to consider the importation of this approach in line with a careful examination of all supports and constraints that affect those factors that are associated with learning. The volume provides an applied theoretical framework and culturally appropriate and practical instructions that could assist Confucian heritage culture educators and teachers to address various factors at multiple levels in order to optimize success in importing cooperative learning to their classrooms. Overall, it provides strategies to assist Confucian heritage culture teachers to change their teaching practices, redesign lessons plans, design assessment methods, and organize learning activities in a manner that can influence Confucian heritage culture students to shift from employing teacher-centered learning approaches to cooperative learning. (shrink)

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)

The traditional soft set is a mapping from a parameter set to family of all crisp subsets of a universe. Molodtsov introduced the soft set as a generalized tool for modelling complex systems involving uncertain or not clearly defined objects. In this paper, the notion of neutrosophic soft set is reanalysed. The novel theory is a combination of neutrosophic set theory and soft set theory. The complement, “and”, “or”, intersection and union operations are defined on the neutrosophic soft sets. The (...) neutrosophic soft relations accompanied with their compositions are also defined. The basic properties of the neutrosophic soft sets, neutrosophic soft relations and neutrosophic soft compositions are also discussed. (shrink)

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

This study presents a description of an open database on scientific output of Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities, one that corrects for the shortcomings in current research publication databases such as data duplication, slow update, and a substantial cost of doing science. Here, using scientists’ self-reports, open online sources and cross-checking with Scopus database, we introduce a manual system and its semi-automated version of the database on the profiles of 657 Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities who (...) have published in Scopus-indexed journals from 2008 to 2018. The final system also records 973 foreign co-authors, 1,289 papers, and 789 affiliations. The data collection method, highly applicable for other sources, could be replicated in other developing countries while its content be used in cross-section, multivariate, and network data analyses. The open database is expected to help Vietnam revamp its research capacity and meet the public demand for greater transparency in science management. (shrink)

Cet article se présente comme un questionnement sur l'attitude à prendre, de la part d'un pays francophone tel que le Vietnam, « lourd » de son passé colonial, et attentif à « rattraper » le train en marche de l'humanité entière, après tant de péripéties et de retard connus durant et à cause de ses temps de guerre. Attitude à adopter envers soi-même, envers l'Autre et l'autre culture. Pour ce, il s'appuie sur les quelques notions de l'interculturel, analyse la façon (...) dont le Vietnam a su gérer ses rapports à soi et à l'Autre, d'hier à aujourd'hui, et propose une attitude à adopter pour chaque pays, dans l'espace francophone et face à la mondialisation. Ce questionnement se veut d'être une voix parmi d'autres et non la seule voix représentative du VietnamThis article’s aim is to ask questions about the attitude that should be adopted by Vietnam, a French-speaking country bearing its "heavy" colonial past. After so many events and delays caused by the war, the country is now interested in catching up with the train represented by the rest of mankind which is moving forward. The question is thus to define the attitude Vietnam could adopt towards itself, towards the Other and the other culture. Thus, this article has made use of certain notions of interculturality, analyzed the way in which Vietnam has managed relations with itself and with the Other, and proposes an attitude for each country to adopt in the French-speaking Community and in reaction to globalization. The author wishes to be a voice among others and not the only voice representing Vietnam. (shrink)

The article analyzes the interpretation of Fr. Alexander Men of Buddhism as teaching of the “Axial Age”. It is based on his seven-volume work “History of Religion: In Search of the Way, Truth and Life”. First defines the methodology used by Fr. Alexander, which is comparative and hermeneutic in nature. At the same time, he proceeds from a theistic-Christian value position, which, nevertheless, allows him respectfully treats other religious-philosophical traditions. The originality of the author’s interpretation of Buddhism is determined, both (...) its adequate features and one-sided, set by the value orientation. The concepts of transcendence and transcendent are differentiated, which allows conducting a comparative analysis of Buddhism and Christianity, assessments given by Fr. Alexander. The denial of the transcendent in Buddhism does not mean the absence of transcendence, especially in understanding the status of nirvana, which is defined purely apophatically. In the Indian worldview, he finds five essential principles that make Buddhism and Christianity related, despite all the difference in their positions: apophaticism, denial of the highest value of earthly goods, recognition of the high dignity of personal asceticism in spiritual life, the concept of “karma” as retribution, the idea of salvation-liberation as the main goal of religion. These principles, in his opinion, “constitute a strong bridge connecting Eastern religious experience with the Gospel”. The work of A. Men contributes to the expansion of the cultural horizon, liberation from both nationalist and Eurocentric points of view, contributes to the development of a dialogue that is so necessary right now. It is noted that the “Axial Age” concept by K. Jaspers as a whole allows avoiding one-sided assessments, revealing the common source of all axial teachings, which can be defined as “a breakthrough to the transcendent”. (shrink)

The relationship between greenwashing and visitors' green behavior remains an under-researched topic in the tourism and hospitality literature, despite evidence of the harmful effect of greenwashing on the reputation and competitive advantage of organizations. This study extends attribution theory into the green context to develop a research framework for investigating the interrelationship between greenwashing, green trust, and green word-of-mouth (WOM), especially the roles of green trust and connectedness to nature. We conducted a survey of 289 visitors staying in four- and (...) five-star hotels in Vietnam. The findings indicated that hotels should avoid greenwashing due to its negative impact on visitors' green trust and green WOM. Moreover, the study found that greenwashing had an indirect and negative influence on green WOM based on visitors' green trust. Importantly, the research revealed the value of connectedness in moderating green attitudes and behaviors among visitors. (shrink)

Objectives: The official implementation of clinical pharmacy in Vietnam has arrived relatively late, resulting in various stressors. This study aims to evaluate job stress level and suggest viable solutions.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on clinical pharmacists in 128 hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City. Job stress questions were derived from the Healthcare Profession Stress Inventory.Results: A total of 197 CPs participated, giving a response rate of 82.4%. Participants were found to have moderate job stress with an overall mean stress (...) score of 1.5 and stress rate of 52.8%. The sample size was statistically adequate and the HPSI was valid and reliable. Patient care responsibility was the main stressor, especially in public hospitals, followed by job conflicts. Lack of experience, low income, and inability to participate in clinical ward rounds caused significant stress to CPs regarding job recognition and job uncertainty. More practice-oriented training programs in bachelor curricula and clinical practice should be applied to help CPs gain more experience, self-confidence, and diminish job stress.Conclusion: CPs in HCMC have moderate stress. More practice-oriented training programs should be prioritized to lessen stress for CPs. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to ascertain the impact of data collecting awareness on perceived information security concerns and information-sharing behavior on social networking sites. Design/methodology/approach Based on communication privacy management theory, the study forecasted the relationship between information-sharing behavior and awareness of data collecting purposes, data collection tactics and perceived security risk using structural equation modeling analysis and one-way ANOVA. The sample size of 521 young social media users in Vietnam, ages 18 to 34, was made up of 26.7% men (...) and 73.3% women. When constructing the questionnaire survey method with lone source respondents, the individual’s unique awareness and experiences with using online social networks (OSNs) were taken into account. Findings The results of the investigation demonstrate a significant relationship between information-sharing and awareness of data collecting, perceptions of information security threats and behavior. Social media users have used OSN privacy settings and paid attention to the sharing restriction because they are concerned about data harvesting. Research limitations/implications This study was conducted among young Vietnamese social media users, reflecting specific characteristics prevalent in the Vietnamese environment, and hence may be invalid in other nations’ circumstances. Practical implications Social media platform providers should improve user connectivity by implementing transparent privacy policies that allow users to choose how their data are used; have clear privacy statements and specific policies governing the use of social media users’ data that respect users’ consent to use their data; and thoroughly communicate how they collect and use user data while promptly detecting any potential vulnerabilities within their systems. Originality/value The authors ascertain that the material presented in this manuscript will not infringe upon any statutory copyright and that the manuscript will not be submitted elsewhere while under Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society review. (shrink)

: Nguyen Trai is a man with a great personality in Vietnam. He has morality, culture, pure soul, and profound wisdom of all times. Nguyen Trai lived in the 15th century in a feudal society with many changes. The paper studied Nguyen Trai’s philosophical thoughts to help develop a prosperous and happy country using the nation’s traditional cultural values. The article uses the methodology of dialectical materialism as a general principle and a specific historical principle to evaluate Nguyen Trai’s benevolence (...) and righteousness in terms of compassion, justice, and management, associated with the interests of the people, the community, and society. The article also uses analytical and synthesis methods to highlight the content of benevolence and righteousness in the cultural tradition of the Vietnamese nation today. The Covid-19 pandemic had affected the world in general and Vietnam in particular. So Nguyen Trai’s thought culture is powerfully and effectively prompt in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic in Vietnam and other countries today. In this article, Nguyen Trai’s benevolence and righteousness fairness clearly define the responsibility of the state and the obligation of citizens to promote the traditional cultural values of the nation. Resumo: Nguyen Trai foi um grande filósofo patriótico vietnamita, uma das maiores personalidades de todos os tempos. Ele viveu no século XV; seus pensamentos se tornaram um grande exemplo de ética, cultura, alma e sabedoria vietnamitas. O artigo estudou os pensamentos filosóficos de Nguyen Trai, para ajudar a desenvolver um país próspero e feliz, usando os valores culturais tradicionais da nação. O texto utiliza a metodologia do materialismo dialético como princípio geral e como princípio histórico específico, a fim de avaliar a benevolência e a retidão de Nguyen Trai, em termos de compaixão, justiça e gestão, associadas aos interesses do povo, da comunidade e da sociedade. O artigo também usa métodos analíticos e de síntese, para destacar o conteúdo de benevolência e retidão, na tradição cultural da nação vietnamita hoje. A pandemia de Covid-19 afetou o mundo, em geral, e o Vietnã, em particular. Portanto, a cultura de pensamento de Nguyen Trai é poderosa e eficaz na resposta à pandemia de Covid19, no Vietnã e em outros países, na atualidade. Neste estudo, a benevolência e a justiça de Nguyen Trai definem claramente a responsabilidade do Estado e a obrigação dos cidadãos de promover os valores culturais tradicionais da nação. (shrink)

Post-mortem reproduction is a complex and contested matter attracting attention from a diverse group of scholars and resulting in various responses from a range of countries. Vietnam has been reluctant to deal directly with this matter and has, accordingly, permitted post-mortem reproduction implicitly. First, by analysing Vietnam’s post-mortem reproduction cases, this paper reflects on the manner in which Vietnamese authorities have handled each case in the context of the contemporary legal framework, and it reveals the moral questions arising therefrom. The (...) article then offers an account of Vietnamese social norms as an explanation for the tendency to conduct post-mortem reproduction. In arguing that a deeper and more thorough examination of the moral and ethical reasoning is required, the paper advocates in favour of supportive post-mortem reproduction regulation. In doing so, the paper seeks to reconcile the Vietnamese legal framework and post-mortem reproduction experiences of other countries. The article concludes that Vietnam and countries sharing the similar cultural traits should permit post-mortem reproduction explicitly. This would require full engagement with the ethical and legal issues arising, and careful promulgation of regulations and guidelines based on comparative experiences of a range of countries in handling this matter. (shrink)

This study investigates the effect of each component of CEO compensation, including cash-based component (salary and bonus), equity-based component (stock grant and stock option), and other perks on disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information of global firms. The study uses 2SLS IV estimation method and a sample of 580 US-based firms in a seven-year period. The study finds that equity-based remuneration has a significant and positive impact on a firm's CSR disclosure while CEO salary, bonus, and other perquisites have (...) significant detrimental effects on CSR disclosure. The paper indicates that a CEO's motivation for CSR reporting might arise from stock grant and option; meanwhile, salary, bonus and other perks could demotivate the CEO in this regard. Our findings offer insight into designing CEO compensation packages to meet shareholders' interests and stakeholders' expectations for a sustainable business. (shrink)

Educational philosophy helps to orient the educational development process of each country and develop the capacity of each individual in society. In the educational history of each country, there is always a process of preserving and transferring social heritages. The educational system prepares the next generation to enter society and imparts ideas, values, and beliefs that will shape young people’s thinking and behavior for the rest of their lives. Therefore, this article wishes to clearly and vividly clarify the importance of (...) studying Pragmatism’s educational philosophy to realize its present influence. At the same time, it is crucial to deeply understand the educational process of Pragmatism to derive meaning and clarify the primary function of educating Vietnamese people in the context of current global integration. The article uses the materialist dialectic method with broad and specific historical principles to evaluate Vietnamese education with opportunities and challenges in the current integration process by studying Pragmatism’s philosophical education. The article found that the theory of education by Pragmatism clarifies the role of social educational institutions – schools in the educational process. In parallel, it is a teacher with educational methods and programs that are the basis for educating learners to become comprehensive citizens in the future. And students are the goal and the product that the educational philosophy needs to implement. Research results, the article clarifies the need to develop an educational philosophy for Vietnamese people to build comprehensively in the socialist orientation in the current globalization context. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper examines the influence of leader humility on knowledge sharing intention. Drawing on social exchange theory, we test the direct and indirect mechanisms to explain the influence leader humility has on knowledge sharing intention.Design/Methodology/ApproachA two-wave, time-lagged field study was conducted. We surveyed 252 professional employees from Australia.FindingsResults show a significant direct, positive association between leader humility and knowledge sharing intention. While leader humility had a direct, positive association with affective trust in supervisor and work engagement, it did not directly (...) impact on organizational citizenship behaviors directed toward the individual. There were three SET-related, serial mediators in the relationship between leader humility and knowledge sharing intention. These were affective trust, work engagement, and OCB-I.Research Limitations/ImplicationsFuture studies should collect multi-source data such as peers’ or supervisors’ ratings of the focal respondents’ work engagement, OCB-I, and knowledge sharing behaviors to augment single-source data. Future studies could adopt an affect theory of social exchange to further explore the relationships tested in this study.Originality/ValueThis study contributes to the affect SET and knowledge management literature on how leadership behaviors impact the intention to share knowledge. Our study highlights the preference of the willingness to share knowledge with their co-workers is mediated by affective trust in their immediate supervisors, work engagement, and OCB-I that are equally important as treating their subordinates with humility. (shrink)

Motivated by exploitation concerns, we argue for the importance of participant engagement in basic human intracranial electrophysiology research. This research takes advantage of unique neurosurgical opportunities to better understand complex systems of the human brain, but it also exposes participants to additional risks without immediate therapeutic intent. We argue that understanding participant values and incorporating their perspectives into the research process may help determine whether and to what extent research practices and the resulting distributions of risks and benefits constitute exploitation (...) and contribute to building a brain research paradigm that is genuinely responsive to participant values. More broadly, we highlight the importance of paying attention to participant interests in non-therapeutic brain research. (shrink)

What is the significance of bodily awareness for bodily action? The orthodox philosophical account from O'Shaughnessy claims that bodily awareness is necessary for bodily action. Whilst O'Shaughnessy's account appears to be consonant with the phenomenology of ordinary agency, it falls afoul to empirical counterexamples. The failure of O'Shaughnessy's account and its cousins might suggest that bodily action does not depend on bodily awareness. On the contrary, I argue that the contrast between the character of afferented and deafferented agency shows that (...) bodily awareness is crucial to explaining the distinctive character of bodily action in neurologically normal agents. In particular, the capacity to feel one's body ‘from the inside’ appears to be a condition on the capacity to act with one's body in a way that is not like remote control. This dependency of capacities is at once empirically adequate and in tune with the phenomenology of ordinary agency. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

The following framework of theses, roughly hewn, shapes contemporary discussion of the problem of mental causation: (1) Non-Identity of the Mental and the Physical Mental properties and states cannot be identified with specific physical properties and states. (2) Causal Closure (Completeness) of the Physical The objective probability of every physical event is fixed by prior physical events and laws alone. (This thesis is sometimes expressed in terms of explanation: In tracing the causal history of any physical event, one need not (...) advert to any non-physical events or laws. To the extent that there is any explanation available for a physical event, there is a complete explanation available couched entirely in physical vocabulary. We prefer the probability formulation, as it should be acceptable to any physicalist, though some reject the explanation formulation.) (3) Causal Exclusion There is at most one complete and wholly independent explanation for any given event or sequence of events. (shrink)

Sweetpotato-pig production is an important system that generates income, utilizes unmarketable crops, and provides manure for soil fertility maintenance. This system is widely practiced from Asia to Africa, with many local variations. Within this system, pigs are generally fed a low nutrient-dense diet, yielding low growth rates and low economic efficiency. Our project in Vietnam went through a process of situation analysis, participatory technology development (PTD), and scaling up over a seven-year period to improve sweetpotato-pig production and to disseminate developed (...) technologies. The situation analysis included a series of pig production assessments in several provinces in northern and southern Vietnam, and pig supply-market chain identification was conducted in 13 provinces. The analysis of these studies informed the project of the following: (1) appropriate locations for our activities; (2) seasonal available feedstuff and farmers’ feeding practices; (3) market fluctuation and requirements; and (4) feeding and management improvement needs based on which the subsequent phase of PTD was designed. The PTD involved a limited number of farmers participating in sweetpotato varietal selection, sweetpotato root and vine silage processing, seasonal feeding combination, and pig feeding with balanced crop-feed diet and silage. Six years of multi-location and multi-season sweetpotato selection resulted in a few promising varieties that yielded up to 75% more dry matter and have since been formally released. The most significant results of silage processing and feeding trials include improved growth, higher feeding efficiency, increased year-round local feedstuff, and considerable labor reduction from eliminated cooking and vine cutting. Once these technologies were developed, a farmer-to-farmer training model was designed for scaling up the adoption and impact. Farmer trainers from seven communes in seven provinces received training in these technologies. In turn, they undertook the responsibility of training other farmers on sweetpotato selection, processing, and feeding. An impact study was also administered to monitor and evaluate (M&E) the dissemination process and to document the impact of the new technologies and farmer-to-farmer training model on pig growth and farmer income generation. The results showed that both participating and non-participating farmers have taken up the technologies, although the former demonstrates higher rates of adoption than the latter. The participants also generated more income and saved more labor from the adoption of the technologies. While the scaling up and M&E activities are on-going, the project has since broadened from a sweetpotato-pig system perspective to a pig-cropfeed system perspective based on farmers’ needs. It has included other crop feeds such as cassava and peanut stems in the research portfolio. New technologies based on on-going PTD will continuously be incorporated into the future training curriculum. (shrink)

When agents insert technological systems into their decision-making processes, they can obscure moral responsibility for the results. This can give rise to a distinct moral wrong, which we call “agency laundering.” At root, agency laundering involves obfuscating one’s moral responsibility by enlisting a technology or process to take some action and letting it forestall others from demanding an account for bad outcomes that result. We argue that the concept of agency laundering helps in understanding important moral problems in a number (...) of recent cases involving automated, or algorithmic, decision-systems. We apply our conception of agency laundering to a series of examples, including Facebook’s automated advertising suggestions, Uber’s driver interfaces, algorithmic evaluation of K-12 teachers, and risk assessment in criminal sentencing. We distinguish agency laundering from several other critiques of information technology, including the so-called “responsibility gap,” “bias laundering,” and masking. (shrink)

A growing amount of media is paid for by its consumers through their very consumption of it. Typically, this new media is web-based and paid for by advertising. It includes the services offered by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. We offer an ethical assessment of the attention economy, the market where attention is exchanged for new media. We argue that the assessment has ethical implications for how the attention economy should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics (...) for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market tends to engender extremely harmful outcomes for individuals or society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates not to the outcomes of the market, but rather, to whether it somehow reflects or has its source in weakened agency. We argue that the attention economy animates concerns with respect to both criteria and that new media should be subject to the same sort of regulation as other harmful, addictive products. (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue (...) has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (...) (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument. (shrink)

Algorithmic systems and predictive analytics play an increasingly important role in various aspects of modern life. Scholarship on the moral ramifications of such systems is in its early stages, and much of it focuses on bias and harm. This paper argues that in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems it is essential to understand the relation between algorithms, autonomy, and agency. We draw on several recent cases in criminal sentencing and K–12 teacher evaluation to outline four key ways in (...) which issues of agency, autonomy, and respect for persons can conflict with algorithmic decision-making. Three of these involve failures to treat individual agents with the respect they deserve. The fourth involves distancing oneself from a morally suspect action by attributing one’s decision to take that action to an algorithm, thereby laundering one’s agency. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

Algorithms influence every facet of modern life: criminal justice, education, housing, entertainment, elections, social media, news feeds, work… the list goes on. Delegating important decisions to machines, however, gives rise to deep moral concerns about responsibility, transparency, freedom, fairness, and democracy. Algorithms and Autonomy connects these concerns to the core human value of autonomy in the contexts of algorithmic teacher evaluation, risk assessment in criminal sentencing, predictive policing, background checks, news feeds, ride-sharing platforms, social media, and election interference. Using these (...) case studies, the authors provide a better understanding of machine fairness and algorithmic transparency. They explain why interventions in algorithmic systems are necessary to ensure that algorithms are not used to control citizens' participation in politics and undercut democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Since 2013, Vietnam has implemented a plan to reform the whole education sector. However, there is little understanding on the status of educational research in Vietnam, which may lay the foundation for such plan. Thus, this research aims to analyze the whole picture of educational research from Vietnam, as seen from the Clarivate Web of Science (WOS) database: 215 publications were recorded, ranging from 1991 to 2018. These 215 publications were further analyzed from five perspectives: 1) number of publications by (...) year; 2) research fields and levels of education; 3) top institutions with the highest number of publications; 4) international collaboration; and 5) quality. Some of the most notable results are: 1) the educational sciences in Vietnam have been still under-developed until recently; 2) among different research topics research among educational sciences, some (e.g., Vocational Education and Training or Early Childhood Education) seemed to be overlooked whereas others (e.g., Higher Education and Teaching and Learning) seemed to receive more attention from educational scholars; 3) all the most major education – specialized universities did not appear among the top five institutions with highest number of publications; 4) Australia, Thailand, the USA, New Zealand and China were the countries with the highest number of co-publications with Vietnamese researchers; and 5) The majority of publications belonged to low-ranked journals. Implications would be withdrawn for Vietnamese policymakers, education leaders, educational researchers and teachers in order to adjust their policies and/or action plans; thus, enhancing the performance and impacts of educational research in the future. (shrink)

This paper offers some refinements to a particular objection to act consequentialism, the “causal impotence” objection. According to proponents of the objection, when we find circumstances in which severe, unnecessary harms result entirely from voluntary acts, it seems as if we should be able to indict at least one act among those acts, but act consequentialism appears to lack the resources to offer this indictment. Our aim is to show is that the most promising response on behalf of act consequentialism, (...) the threshold argument, cannot offer a fully general prescription about what to do in cases of collective action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: So far in this book, we have examined algorithmic decision systems from three autonomy-based perspectives: in terms of what we owe autonomous agents (chapters 3 and 4), in terms of the conditions required for people to act autonomously (chapters 5 and 6), and in terms of the responsibilities of agents (chapter 7). -/- In this chapter we turn to the ways in which autonomy underwrites democratic governance. Political authority, which is to say the ability of a government to exercise (...) power, may be justifiable or not. Whether it is justified and how it can come to be justified is a question of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy is another way in which autonomy and responsibility are linked. This relationship is the basis of the current chapter, and it is important in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems. We will draw the connection as follows. We begin, in section 8.1, by describing two uses of technology: crime predicting technology used to drive policing practices and social media technology used to influence elections (including by Cambridge Analytica and by the Internet Research Agency). In section 8.2 we consider several views of legitimacy and argue for a hybrid version of normative legitimacy based on one recently offered by Fabienne Peter. In section 8.3 we will explain that the connection between political legitimacy and autonomy is that legitimacy is grounded in legitimating processes, which are in turn based on autonomy. Algorithmic systems—among them PredPol and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Internet Research Agency amalgam—can hinder that legitimation process and conflict with democratic legitimacy, as we argue in section 8.4. We will conclude by returning to several cases that serve as through-lines to the book: Loomis, Wagner, and Houston Schools. -/- The link below is to an open-access copy of the chapter. (shrink)

Online book fairs are being held in Vietnam to replace traditional offline events that have been shelved owing to the COVID-19 crisis. This study aims to explore book consumers’ perceptions regarding digital book fairs and their evaluation of the first-ever national online book fair held in Vietnam. In-depth interviews were conducted to obtain insights from people who had attended the online book event. The findings provide acceptance of and support for the organization of digital book fairs during the COVID-19 pandemic. (...) Attendees generally appreciated the convenience of the national online book fair and the promotional programmes offered by various publishers and distributors. Furthermore, some attendees enjoyed the novelty of the event and the feeling of being included in the reading community. Nevertheless, most of the attendees highlighted several limitations, especially the lack of social and face-to-face interaction. These findings have implications for online book fair organizers, publishers, and book distributors alike. (shrink)

According to the reports in the past decade, some Asian subcontractors, mainly Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea transnational corporations, tend to be labor abusive in their overseas investment destinations like China or Southeast Asia. Taking Vietnam as an example, this paper raises questions as to why Taiwanese transnational companies can control workplace unions in a trade-union-supportive regime. Given the government s constraint of political rights, and the individualized workplace unions, the function of trade unions in Vietnam is destined to (...) be limited. The trade unions turn out be an arm of management, rather than representing workers interests in these transnational companies. This article also explores the influence of the newly developed codes of conducts from Western buyers. In the survey of three companies which are required to follow the codes of conduct by buyers, trade unions had no more freedom than those in companies without codes of conduct. The paper discusses the implications of this research, offering strategies for labor rights improvements. (shrink)

U.S. law imposes strict recording and reporting requirements on all entities that manufacture and distribute controlled substances. As a result, the prescription opioid crisis has unfolded in a data-saturated environment. This article asks why the systematic documentation of opioid transactions failed to prevent or mitigate the crisis. Drawing on a recently disclosed trove of 1.4 million internal records from Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, a leading manufacturer of prescription opioids, we highlight a phenomenon we propose to call data diversion, whereby data ostensibly generated (...) or collected for the purpose of regulating the distribution of controlled substances were repurposed by the industry for the opposite aim of increasing sales at all costs. Systematic data diversion, we argue, contributed substantially to the scale of drug diversion seen with opioids and should become a focus of policy intervention. (shrink)

Public parks play important roles in conserving biodiversity, promoting environmental sustainability, fostering community engagement, and enhancing the overall well-being of residents in urban areas. Nevertheless, finance is needed to maintain and expand the greenspaces in the parks. The current study aims to examine how perceptions of biodiversity loss consequences and park visitation frequency influence the residents’ willingness to contribute financially to tree-planting projects in public parks. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we (...) discovered that perceived health loss and knowledge erosion as consequences of biodiversity loss and park visitation frequency are directly positively associated with financial donation willingness. Meanwhile, the perceived economic growth loss was found to be indirectly positively associated with donation willingness through park visitation frequency, whereas the perceived loss of nature-based recreation opportunities exhibits the opposite indirect association. Based on these results, communication strategies focusing on the multifaceted benefits of biodiversity preservation and investments in public parks are recommended to improve urban residents’ financial support to park panting initiatives, accessibility to greenspaces, and connections with nature. These are crucial for promoting an eco-surplus culture that enhances biodiversity conservation and human well-being. (shrink)

A common theme conspicuously emerges from the few translated and published narratives of Vietnamese who participated in resistance against French colonialism in the 1950s. These narratives tend to identify moments of being an audience member to theater as having significant roles in these individuals’ political awakening and desire to sacrifice themselves for anticolonial struggle. Drawing on these narratives, this essay shows how some audience members engage in an empowering kind of political theorizing that elicits cross-cultural revelation, is progressive, generates feelings (...) of solidarity, and inspires them to engage in political action. In showing how being an audience member can lead to revolutionary action, these cases exceed the expectations of theorists of revolutionary theater such as Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal. They also offer a direct refutation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous claim that being an audience member at a theatrical performance is politically and morally enervating. (shrink)

Relationships with international students can be beneficial to higher education in terms of financial and human resources. For this reason, establishing and maintaining such relationships are usually pre-eminent concerns. In this study, we extended the application of the disconfirmation expectation model by incorporating components from subjective task value to predict the loyalty of international students toward their host countries. On a sample of 410 Vietnamese students enrolled in establishments of higher education in over 15 countries across the globe, we employed (...) structural equation model to construct the conceptual model. Our empirical findings revealed that while the roles of satisfaction and disconfirmation are still important as direct and indirect antecedents of international student loyalty, its most powerful predictors are the three components of subjective task value: attainment, utility and intrinsic. These insights result in a number of implications for actors on the higher ducation scene, such as heads of institutions and policy makers. (shrink)

It has been contended that ostracism is prevalent in the workplace, and there has been increasing research interest in its potential effects. This paper extends the theoretical framework of workplace ostracism by linking it with affective commitment and intention to leave from the perspective of job embeddedness. Using time-lagged data from China, we apply job embeddedness theory to confirm that workplace ostracism decreases the cultivation of job embeddedness, which in turn undermines affective commitment and induces intention to leave. We also (...) find that intrinsic work motivation strengthens the detrimental effects of workplace ostracism on job embeddedness such that the negative relationship is stronger when intrinsic motivation is high rather than low. We further discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and offer future research directions. (shrink)

Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities have implemented network teaching. E-learning engagement is the most important concern of educators and parents because this will directly affect student academic performance. Hence, this study focuses on students’ perceived family support and their e-learning engagement and analyses the effects of e-learning normative consciousness and behaviours and self-efficacy on the relationship between family support and e-learning engagement in college students. Prior to this study, the relationship between these variables was unknown. Four (...) structural equation models revealed the multiple mediating roles of e-learning normative consciousness and behaviours and self-efficacy in the relationship between family support and e-learning engagement. A total of 1317 college students (mean age = 19.51; 52.2% freshman) voluntarily participated in our study. The results showed that e-learning normative consciousness and behaviours and self-efficacy played significant and mediating roles between students’ perceived family support and their e-learning engagement. Specifically, these two individual variables fully mediated the relationship between students’ perceived family support and their e-learning engagement. The multiple mediation model showed that family members can increase family support of their children by creating a household environment conducive to learning, displaying positive emotions, demonstrating the capability to assist their children, advocating the significance of learning normative consciousness and behaviours and encouraging dedicated and efficient learning. The findings complement and extend the understanding of factors influencing student e-learning engagement. (shrink)

Psychometrics firms such as Cambridge Analytica (CA) and troll factories such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) have had a significant effect on democratic politics, through narrow targeting of political advertising (CA) and concerted disinformation campaigns on social media (IRA) (U.S. Department of Justice 2019; Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate 2019; DiResta et al. 2019). It is natural to think that such activities manipulate individuals and, hence, are wrong. Yet, as some recent cases illustrate, the moral concerns with (...) these activities cannot be reduced simply to the effects they have on individuals. Rather, we will argue, the wrongness of these activities relates to the threats they present to the legitimacy of political orders. This occurs primarily through a mechanism we call “emergent manipulation,” rather than through the sort of manipulation that involves specific individuals. (shrink)

There are many ethical issues that arise during the period of transition from a planning economy to a market economy. Academics and researchers on ethics appear to think that business and ethics overlap. However, this paper addresses the relation between business and ethics from the perspective of business people. From a historical and cultural perspective, the connection between business and ethics is relevant. But in practice business people only sometimes regard this connection as useful, most of the time considering the (...) two as being quite separate. In interviews of 21 people who are owners, chief executive officers or senior managers in state–owned or private enterprises, this study found that business ethics is indeed a dilemma for them for reasons of competitive survival. Therefore, in order to improve the ethical climate, the definition of enterprise, the guidance of government policy and the audit system all have an important role to play. (shrink)

The relationship between Vietnam and China could be captured in the Chinese expression of “同床异梦”, which means lying on the same bed but having different dreams. The two countries share certain cultural and political similarities but also diverge vastly in their national interests. This paper adds to the extant literature on this topic by analyzing the element of trust/mistrust in their interactions in trade-investment, tourism, and defense-security. The analysis shows how the relationship is increasingly interdependent but is equally fragile due (...) to the lack of trust on both sides. The mistrust or even distrust of Chinese subjects run deep within the Vietnamese mindset, from the skepticism of Chinese investment, Chinese tourists, discrimination against ethnic Chinese, to the caution against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. The paper forecasts that, despite the deep-seated differences and occasional mistrust, going forward, neither side would risk damaging the status quo even when tensions peak. (shrink)

There are many ethical issues that arise during the period of transition from a planning economy to a market economy. Academics and researchers on ethics appear to think that business and ethics overlap. However, this paper addresses the relation between business and ethics from the perspective of business people. From a historical and cultural perspective, the connection between business and ethics is relevant. But in practice business people only sometimes regard this connection as useful, most of the time considering the (...) two as being quite separate. In interviews of 21 people who are owners, chief executive officers or senior managers in state–owned or private enterprises, this study found that business ethics is indeed a dilemma for them for reasons of competitive survival. Therefore, in order to improve the ethical climate, the definition of enterprise, the guidance of government policy and the audit system all have an important role to play. (shrink)

Chance-based gambling has been a recurrent cultural activity throughout history and across many diverse human societies. In this paper, I combine quantitative and qualitative data and present a cultural evolutionary framework to explain why the odds in games of chance in premodern China appeared “designed” to ensure a moderate yet favorable house advantage. This is especially intriguing since extensive research in the history of probability has shown that, prior to the development of probability theory, people had very limited understanding of (...) the nature of random events and were generally disinclined to think mathematically about the frequency of their occurrence. I argue that games of chance in the context of gambling may have culturally evolved into their documented forms via a process of selective imitation and retention, and neither the customers nor the gambling houses understood the probability calculus involved in these games. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship plays an indispensable role in the economic development and poverty reduction of emerging economies like Vietnam. The rapid development of technologies during the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) has a significant impact on business in every field, especially in the innovation-focused area of entrepreneurship. However, the topic of entrepreneurial activities with technology applications in Vietnam is under-researched. In addition, the body of literature regarding entrepreneurial finance tends to focus on advanced economies, while mostly neglecting the contextual differences in developing (...) nations. Therefore, this research contributes to these topics by investigating the main characteristics of a high potential market for entrepreneurs in Vietnam, which is the English language training market (ELTM). It also aims at indicating the impacts of technology on the entrepreneurial firms within this market, with an emphasis on financing sources. To answer the research questions, this study employs a qualitative analysis and conducts 12 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and researchers in the field. The key findings in our study highlight the main contributing factors to the growth of the market, both universally and context-specific for a developing nation like Vietnam. It also lists the leaders in each market segment and the industry’s potential profit margin. The results also show that most entrepreneurs in the ELTM utilized private sources of finance rather than external ones, such as bank loans. It again confirms the idea from previous works that even with the rapid development of the economic and technological landscape, entrepreneurial activities in general barely benefit from additional sources of funding. However, it also points out the distinct characteristics of the ELTM that may influence these financing issues; for example, English training services usually collect revenues from customers before delivering their classes. This is of advantage for entrepreneurs in this area and helps significantly reduce the financial barriers. These findings, which are among the first attempts to contribute to a better understanding of entrepreneurial opportunities in the Industry 4.0 in Vietnam, provide valuable insights for policymakers and entrepreneurs, as well as investors. (shrink)