In connection with the discussion on the problem of logic, both within our country and abroad , it has already turned from the general, comparatively abstract, and difficult-to-resolve problem of the "relationship between formal logic and dialectics" to the more concrete problem of the functional scope of formal logic. Some people have even utilized special articles to inquire about a certain law in formal logic: the functional scope of the law of identity or the law of contradiction. The purpose of (...) these philosophers or logicians is to try to define the functional scope of a certain law in formal logic as a starting point, and then to proceed to study the functional scope of formal logic in the entire thinking process of mankind. If the functional scope of formal logic in mankind's entire thinking process is clearly and precisely defined, the solution of this complicated problem of the "relationship between formal logic and dialectics" would certainly not be very difficult. The basic purpose of Comrade Chu-ko Yin-t'ung's article on the problem of "whether or not formal logic's law of contradiction can be contravened in the dialectical thinking process" of men, which appeared in issue No. 82 of the "Philosophy" supplement of Kuang-ming Daily on April 24, is like this. It should be considered as a rather practical method. But I do not quite agree with his basic points of argument and with his analysis of certain examples of dialectics. I intend to present my superficial views here and to study them with Comrade Chu-ko. (shrink)

Drawing on stakeholder theory and the concept of enlightened self-interest, we argue that firms that actively engage in corporate philanthropic giving also tend to demonstrate greater concern for investors’ interests by providing more transparent financial information and avoiding corporate misconduct. Moreover, the relationships between corporate giving, financial information transparency, and corporate misconduct vary significantly according to the firm’s ownership type, which affects the fundamental motivations for corporate philanthropy. In a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms from the 2003–2009 period, we (...) find a positive relationship between corporate giving and financial transparency, and note that the relationship is stronger for non-state-owned enterprises. We also find a significantly negative association between corporate giving and corporate misconduct for non-SOEs, but not for SOEs. Taken together, these findings suggest that responsibility to both stakeholders and shareholders is a vital part of building trust and reputations in China’s non-SOE sector. (shrink)

Standalone corporate social responsibility reports vary considerably in the content of information released due to their voluntary nature. In this study, we develop a disclosure score based on the tone, readability, length, and the numerical and horizon content of CSR report narratives, and examine the relationship between the CSR disclosure scores and analyst forecasts. We find that CSR reporters with high disclosure scores are associated with more accurate forecasts, whereas low score CSR reporters are not associated with more accurate forecasts (...) than firms who do not issue CSR reports. The findings are robust to controlling for firm characteristics including CSR activity ratings and financial narratives. The findings are driven by experienced CSR reporters rather than first-time CSR reporters. Together, our findings suggest that the content of CSR reports helps to improve analyst forecast accuracy, and this relationship is more pronounced for CSR reports with more substantial content. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss cronyism that exists between superiors and subordinates. Cronyism is defined as favoritism shown by the superior to his or her subordinate based on their relationship, rather than the latter's capability or qualification, in exchange for the latter's personal loyalty. We argue that two cultural antecedents, namely particularism and paternalism, give rise to strong ingroup bias and unreserved personal loyalty, which in turn lead to cronyism. We examine the consequences of cronyism at the individual level with (...) respect to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and ingratiation. We also discuss how cronyism affects performance, morale, and inertia at the organizational level. Cronyism can be observed in all cultures; however, its manifestation is likely to vary from one culture to another. (shrink)

Negative workplace gossip generates social undermining and great side effects to employees. But, the damage of negative gossip is mainly aimed at the employee who perceived being targeted. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model in which perceived negative workplace gossip influences employees’ in-role behavior and organizational citizenship behavior differentially by changing employees’ self-concept (organizational based self-esteem and perceived insider status). 336 employees from 7 Chinese companies were investigated for empirical analysis on proposed hypotheses, and results (...) show that: (1) Perceived negative workplace gossip adversely influences employees’ IRB and OCB. (2) Self-concept (OBSE and PIS) plays a mediating role in the relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and employees’ behaviors (IRB and OCB); (3) Employees’ hostile attribution bias moderates the relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and self-concept (OBSE and PIS); and also moderates the mediating effect of self-concept (OBSE and PIS) on the relationship between perceived negative workplace gossip and employees’ behaviors (IRB and OCB). Thus, our findings provide deeper insights into the potential harmful effects of gossip. In addition, we help to explain the underlying mechanism and boundary condition of these effects. (shrink)

McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson (2001) posited that gratitude prompts individuals to behave prosocially. However, research supporting the prosocial effect of gratitude has relied on scenario and self-report methodology. To address limitations of previous research, this experiment utilised a laboratory induction of gratitude, a method that is potentially more covert than scenarios and that elicits actual grateful emotion. Prosocial responses to gratitude—operationalised as the distribution of resources to another—were paired with a self-report measure of gratitude to test the prosocial effect (...) of gratitude. To investigate positive mood as an alternative explanation, this experiment compared responses of individuals receiving a favour to responses of individuals receiving a positive outcome by chance. A total of 40 participants were randomly assigned to either a Favour or Chance condition. Participants receiving a favour helped more and reported more gratitude compared to participants in the Chance condition. (shrink)

This article explores how the institutional context, including central and local governments, has co-evolved with business in relation to small cars and sustainability. This issue is very relevant for business and society in view of the environmental implications of the rapidly growing vehicle fleet in China, the economic importance attached to this pillar industry by the government, and citizen interest in owning and driving increasingly larger cars. The interactions between different levels of government, and with business in countries with a (...) large role for the state is a novel area of study in the business-society area and a complex one given the multitude of objectives and interests involved in industry competitiveness, economic development, energy security, and sustainability. The article shows that the central government has adopted policies to further the production and use of small cars, which it perceives as serving environmental, economic, and social goals. Concurrently, however, many local governments imposed restrictions on small cars and have, implicitly or explicitly, favored larger cars. There seems to be a clear linkage to municipal ownership of those domestic automobile companies which, via joint ventures with foreign firms, focused more on larger cars. By adopting a co-evolutionary approach focused on macro-level interactions, the case helps to shed some more light on concrete sustainability challenges, and broader government–business interactions in a highly institutionalized setting, contributing insights on issues that have remained underexposed in business and society research. (shrink)

This study examines whether and how the presence of managerial hedging opportunities, which allows executives to reduce the sensitivity of their equity-based compensation to the firm’s stock price performance, affects firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We find a significant and negative relationship between the presence of managerial hedging opportunities and firms’ CSR performance. The effect of managerial hedging opportunities on CSR performance is more pronounced for CEOs with greater personal hedging needs. Additionally, the effect is weakened if firms limit (...) corporate insiders from trading exchange-listed options. Overall, this study suggests that allowing managers to delink their equity-based compensation from firm stock price performance through hedging their personal portfolios can lead to unexpected consequences for firms’ CSR performance. (shrink)

This comment explores the use of behavioral measures in the developmental study of guilt and gratitude reviewed by Vaish and Hepach. Although the use of behavioral measures in developmental...

People often make less risky decisions for themselves than others. We examined how people allocated risks (i.e., determining the ratio of uncertain outcomes to certain outcomes) between themselves and others. We also investigated gain (vs. loss) domain and social value orientation as predictors of risk allocations. The results of three experiments demonstrated that participants were more likely to share their risks equally between themselves and others than distribute risk unequally. In the gain (vs. loss) domain, participants allocated fewer risks to (...) themselves and more risks to the other person for unequal risk allocations. Compared to proselfs, prosocials were more likely to allocate risks equally. We also found stronger domain effects on unequal risk allocations for proselfs than for prosocials. Therefore, our findings clarify the effects of risk distribution, domain, and social value orientation on interpersonal allocation decisions and highlight equal risk distribution between oneself and others. (shrink)

Pathological morphogenesis on leaves of Fraxinus ornus (ash) and Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) under the influence of mites (Aceria fraxinivora and Eriophyes cladophthirus respectively) leads to a range of structures whose morphology and development cannot be reduced to the classical categories of plant morphology, but present a heterogeneous continuum which links fundamental structural categories. These findings support the pyramid model of plant construction.

In “Generalizing Generalizability in Information Systems Research,” Lee and Baskerville try to clarify generalization and classify it into four types. Unfortunately, their account is problematic. We propose repairs. Central among these is our balance-of-evidence argument that we should adopt the view that Hume’s problem of induction has a solution, even if we do not know what it is. We build upon this by proposing an alternative classification of induction. There are five types of generalization: theoretical, within-population, cross-population, contextual, and temporal, (...) with theoretical generalization being across the empirical and theoretical levels and the rest within the empirical level. Our classification also includes two kinds of inductive reasoning that do not belong to the domain of generalization. We then discuss the implications of our classification for information systems research. (shrink)

Our study finds that relative to firms managed by local CEOs, firms managed by CEOs who have returned from overseas (returnee CEOs) exhibit significantly higher audit fees. We also find this positive association to be stronger for returnee CEOs who manage firms with greater agency problems, have overseas experience in countries with better developed institutions, or have greater business knowledge. Further analyses indicate that firms managed by returnee CEOs tend to exhibit better financial reporting quality, lower propensities for financial fraud, (...) and fewer earnings restatements in subsequent years. In addition, firms managed by returnee CEOs are associated with greater internationalization and higher propensities for seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) than firms managed by local CEOs. Overall, our findings are most consistent with the conjecture that returnees tend to bring ethics and practices that ensure higher financial reporting quality back to their home countries. Our findings offer a plausible explanation that returnee talents could increase firm value. (shrink)

Before there was the digital divide there was the analog divide– and universal service was the attempt to close that analogdivide. Universal service is becoming ever more complex in terms ofregulatory design as it becomes the digital divide. In order to evaluatethe promise of the next generation Internet with respect to the digitaldivide this work looks backwards as well as forwards in time. Byevaluating why previous universal service mechanisms failed andsucceeded this work identifies specific characteristics ofcommunications systems – in particular (...) in billing and managinguncertainty – and argues that these characteristics underliesuccess or failure in terms of technological ubiquity. Developing a setof characteristics of services rather than a set of services is afundamental break with the tradition of universal service. In fact, theimplications of our proposal is that basic characteristics in theoffering of the service rather than the absolute price are critical toclose the digital divide: certainty of total charge, ability to avoiddeposits or disconnection via best effort service, and payer-basedcontrol of all charges. While all of these principles sound obvious infact none of these hold in the telephony network. Universal service hasevolved from common carriage (serve all with no discrimination) to aright to basic services (100% penetration). Universal service isnow discussed as the digital divide, as the access to information asopposed to services becomes increasingly critical. However, we arediscussing in this paper access to the bits and the network rather thanaccess to the information (or intellectual property) once connected. Theprovision of universal service is seen as a technical problem only in thatthe technology costs money – universal service debates have longbeen the domain of economists. Yet the design of protocols has been thedomain of engineers, the building of systems the corporate domain, andthe discussion of equity the interest of ethicists. The design ofprotocols can define the parameters of the corporate decision-makers,the variables of the economist, and the questions for the ethicist. Thedesign decisions made at the fundamental levels can make communicationsequity more or less likely. In this work I focus on the design ofprotocols for the next generation Internet, protocols which willfundamentally change the best-effort nature of Internet services.Building on the economic and ethnographic work of others I argue thatthe effects of protocols adoption on universal service can be predictedto some degree. By examination of past and current technologies Iexamine a set of technical mechanisms to determine how such mechanismsmight harm or enhance universal service. I define each mechanism (e.g.denial of entry) and offer observations about each particularmechanism''s implicit pricing assumptions. I close with a discussion ofinterest to ethicists and regulators on evaluating communicationsprotocols with respect to universal access. Protocols for developingmultiple qualities of service for packet-switched networks have focusedon economic efficiency (e.g. Mackie-Mason, 1995; Choi, Stahl &Winston, 1997; Shapiro & Varian, 1998), billing to encouragewidespread adoption of network innovations (e.g. Xie & Sirbu, 1985)and billing in a manner consistent with the underlying network (e.g.Clark, 1996). Here we examine a set of protocols which include varyingquality of service mechanisms with respect to the compatibility of theprotocols with universal access. (shrink)