Indoor plants can positively impact physical and mental health in daily life. However, the benefits of viewing indoor plants may be enhanced if the plants emit a fragrant aroma. In this crossover-design study, we measured the physiological and psychological effects of fragrant and non-fragrant Primula plants on 50 female college students, and explored whether aroma stimulation had additive benefits for this group. Non-fragrant Primula malacoides Franch was used as a control stimulus, and Primula forbesii Franch, which has a floral fragrance, (...) was used as an experimental stimulus. We measured blood pressure, pulse rate, and electroencephalogram to evaluate physiological responses, and used a mood state profile and the semantic differential method to evaluate psychological responses. We found that mean blood pressure and pulse rate decreased significantly after the experiment in both conditions. EEGs showed that the mean values of high alpha waves, high beta waves, and relaxation scores were significantly higher in the experimental vs. control condition. The average scores on each subscale of the psychological questionnaire improved after the experiment in both conditions, and the vitality subscale and total emotional state scores were significantly better in the experimental vs. control condition. The results of the SD method showed that the sense of relaxation and comfort were significantly higher in the experimental vs. control condition. Compared with the non-fragrant Primula, the fragrant Primula induced relatively better physiological and psychological effects. (shrink)
Locus equations contain an economical set of hidden (i.e., not directly observable in the data) parameters of speech that provide an elegant way of characterizing the ubiquitous context-dependent behaviors exhibited in speech acoustics. These hidden parameters can be effectively exploited to constrain the huge set of context-dependent speech model parameters currently in use in modern, mainstream speech recognition technology.
The complexity of today’s organizational environment increasingly requires leaders to think in a dynamic and flexible way to resolve contradictory issues. This study explored and compared the effects of servant leadership and authoritarian leadership on employees’ work behavior from the perspectives of ambidextrous leadership theory and social exchange theory, and further examined the mediating role of psychological empowerment. In this study, 315 employees from state-owned communication companies in Shandong and Zhejiang Provinces in China were selected as subjects, and path analysis (...) was used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that servant leadership positively predicted organizational citizenship behavior and task performance. While authoritarian leadership negatively predicted organizational citizenship behavior and positively predicted task performance, psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between the two leadership styles and organizational citizenship behavior and task performance. Moreover, psychological empowerment and organizational citizenship behavior played a multiple mediating role between the two leadership styles and task performance. The theoretical implications of these findings for advancing the ambidextrous leadership theory in Chinese organizational contexts and practical approaches for corporate managers to effectively use ambidextrous leadership style were discussed. (shrink)
Human resource management risks are due to the failure of employer organization to use relevant human resources reasonably and can result in tangible or intangible waste of human resources and even risks; therefore, constructing a practical early warning model of human resource management risk is extremely important for early risk prediction. The back propagation neural network is an information analysis and processing system formed by using the error back propagation algorithm to simulate the neural function and structure of the human (...) brain, which can handle complex and changeable things that do not have an obvious linear relationship between output results and input factors, so as to find the objective connection between the two. Based on the summary and analysis of previous research works, this article expounded the research status and significance of early warning for human resource management risks, elaborated the development background, current status, and future challenges of the BP neural network, introduced the method and principle of the BP neural network’s connection weight calculation and learning training, performed the risk inducement analysis, index system establishment, and network node selection of human resource management, constructed an early warning model of human resource management risk based on the BP neural network, conducted the risk warning model training and detection based on the BP neural network, and finally carried out a simulation and its result analysis. The study results show that the early warning model of human resource management risk based on the BP network is effective, and this trained and tested BP network risk warning model can be used to conduct early warning empirical research on human resource risks to prevent human resource risks, ensure enterprise’s benign operation, and at the same time play a role in supervision and promotion of market order rectification. (shrink)
To identify relationships among entities in natural language texts, extraction of entity relationships technically provides a fundamental support for knowledge graph, intelligent information retrieval, and semantic analysis, promotes the construction of knowledge bases, and improves efficiency of searching and semantic analysis. Traditional methods of relationship extraction, either those proposed at the earlier times or those based on traditional machine learning and deep learning, have focused on keeping relationships and entities in their own silos: extracting relationships and entities are conducted in (...) steps before obtaining the mappings. To address this problem, a novel Chinese relationship extraction method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the triple is treated as an entity relation chain and can identify the entity before the relationship and predict its corresponding relationship and the entity after the relationship. Secondly, the Joint Extraction of Entity Mentions and Relations model is based on the Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory and Maximum Entropy Markov Model. Experimental results indicate that the proposed model can achieve a precision of 79.2% which is much higher than that of traditional models. (shrink)
Tax haven investment has become an increasingly important topic in business ethics. Given the considerable tax haven investments from emerging market firms, understanding how home-country institutions shape their investments in tax havens is theoretically intriguing and practically crucial. By integrating resource dependence and institutional theories, we hypothesize the existence of a negative relationship between firms’ home-country political status and tax haven investment. State-owned enterprises controlled by the central government dominate the political hierarchy. Compared with other types of enterprises, central SOEs (...) receive the strongest institutional support and are the most prone to institutional oversight, thereby exhibiting the weakest tendency to invest in tax havens. This top group is followed by SOEs controlled by local governments, politically connected private firms, and private firms without political connections. These groups exhibit an increasing tendency to invest in overseas tax havens. The empirical analysis of Chinese listed firms during 2003–2013 supports our hypotheses. This research contributes to the business ethics literature by identifying institutional drivers of overseas tax haven investment by emerging market firms, thereby adding to the ethical debate on international tax avoidance. (shrink)
From the perspective of entrepreneurial team processes, this study examines the effect of dynamic team environment on entrepreneurial team innovation. Through applying the uncertainty reduction theory and group process theory, this study proposes the influence mechanism and boundary condition of the relationship between dynamic team environment on entrepreneurial team innovation. By analyzing a sample of 270 entrepreneurial teams in China, this study found that dynamic team environment could evoke entrepreneurial team innovation via triggering team members’ agreement seeking behavior and then (...) promoting team knowledge integration. In addition, team centralization of decision making can weaken the relationship between agreement seeking behavior and team knowledge integration. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of entrepreneurial teams’ reactions to dynamic environment and the multistep mechanism that transfers the impact of dynamic team environment to entrepreneurial team innovation through team members’ reactions and team interactions. (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)
Whether team task conflict is beneficial or harmful to team innovation has long been controversial, and empirical studies on the team task conflict–team innovation relationship were inconsistent. Drawing on the contingency model of team innovation, the current study examined how team task conflict interacts with two types of team supportive climates, namely team support for innovation (TSFI) and team psychological safety (TPS), in predicting team innovation via team information elaboration. We tested our hypotheses using multi-source and lagged data collected from (...) 361 employees working in 98 research and development teams. As expected, team information elaboration mediated the interaction effects between team task conflict and team supportive climates on team innovation. In particular, team task conflict had a positive indirect effect on team innovation via team information elaboration when TSFI or TPS was high. However, such indirect effect was negative when TSFI was low and was not significant when TPS was low. Residualized relative weight analysis comparing the moderation effects further suggests that TFSI and TPS are equally important team climates in activating the beneficial effect of team task conflict. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)
As the aging population, including frail older people, continues to grow in Mainland China, quality of life and end-of-life care for frail older people has attracted much attention. Advance care planning is an effective way to improve end-of-life care for people with advanced diseases, and it is widely used in developed countries; however, it is a new concept in Mainland China. The effects of advance care planning and its acceptability in Mainland China are uncertain because of its culture-sensitive characteristics. The (...) objective of this article is to discuss the serious social issue of caring for frail older people and illustrate the possibility of implementing advance care planning in nursing homes in Mainland China through a review of relevant literature, which will focus on legislation, healthcare system engagement, public engagement, and cultural issues. Recommendations to promote and implement advance care planning include choosing nursing homes as a proper setting, establishing an ethical climate, and enhancing public awareness. (shrink)
v. 1 - 2. Yan Yuan wen ji -- v. 3 - 4. Li Gong wen ji -- v. 5. Yan shi xue ji. Yan Xizhai zhe xue si xiang shu -- v. 6. Yan Xizhai he Du Wei zhe xue si xiang ji jiao yu si xiang de bi jiao yan jiu. Yan Li xue pai -- v. 7. Yan Yuan ping zhuan. Yan Yuan yu Li Gong -- v. 8. Li Gong ping zhuan. Li Gong si xiang yan (...) jiu -- v. 9 - 10. Yan Li xue pai yan jiu wen xuan. (shrink)
Drawing on the status characteristic theory, we investigate the effect of gender on board directors’ status ranking and find that all else being equal, female directors’ status ranking is 81.48% of one position lower than that of male directors, a discrepancy that is attributable to gender. We theorize on the mechanism that determines the ways in which the status value of gender on a board affects board interactions, and we predict how this mechanism influences firm outcomes, including excessive managerial spending, (...) social responsibility performance, and firm risk. We test our hypotheses in Chinese firms using an unbalanced panel that includes 5396 firm-year observations for a period of 6 years and find them supported. (shrink)
Drawing on the similarity-attraction perspective and social identity theory, we argue that male versus female interlocking directors are likely to have different experiences when they work alongside female board directors of other firms. The theorized source of such experiences for male interlocking directors is in-group favoritism and/or a social identity threat-related discomfort. Interlocking female directors are theorized to be ambivalent between desiring social support versus experiencing identity threat-based career concerns. These experiences are predicted to motivate male versus female interlocking directors (...) in different ways to reduce or, conversely, to potentially facilitate female representation on focal boards. We additionally predict that economic crisis reduces the biases of male directors against appointing female directors to boards. We test our hypotheses based on a novel data set that includes 25,460 directors in Chinese A-share public companies with a sample of 27,058 firm-quarter observations for 1635 firms between 2006 and 2010 and find most of our hypotheses supported. (shrink)
Prior research suggests that participating in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities can lead to higher future productivity. However, the empirical evidence is still scarce. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between CSR and future firm productivity in the U.S. chemical industry. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between CSR in year t and firm productivity in year (t + 1), (t + 2), and (t + 3). We use Data Envelopment Analysis, a non-parametric method, to measure (...) firm productivity. Results from the regression analysis support a significantly positive relationship between CSR and future firm productivity, suggesting that CSR can lead to higher productivity in the chemical industry. The findings add to the validity of the proposition in prior research. (shrink)
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic called for a new ethical climate in the designated hospitals and imposed challenges on care quality for anti-pandemic nurses. Less was known about whether hospital ethical climate and nurses’ ethical sensitivity were associated with care quality. This study examined the association between the perceived hospital ethical climate and self-evaluated quality of care for COVID-19 patients among anti-pandemic nurses, and explored the mediating role of ethical sensitivity in this relationship.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted through an online survey. A (...) total of 399 anti-pandemic nurses from ten designated hospitals in three provinces of China were recruited to fill out an online survey. Multiple linear regression analysis and a bootstrap test were used to examine the relationships between ethical climate, ethical sensitivity and care quality.ResultsNurses reported mean scores of 4.43 ± 0.577 for hospital ethical climate, 45.00 ± 7.085 for ethical sensitivity, and 5.35 ± 0.661 for self-evaluated care quality. After controlling for covariates, perceived hospital ethical climate was positively associated with self-evaluated care quality, and was partly mediated by ethical sensitivity.ConclusionsChinese nurses who cared for COVID-19 patients perceived high levels of hospital ethical climate, ethical sensitivity, and self-evaluated care quality. Positive perceptions of hospital ethical climate were both directly associated with a higher level of self-evaluated care quality and indirectly associated, through the mediation effect of ethical sensitivity among anti-pandemic nurses. (shrink)