BackgroundPublished data and practice recommendations on end-of-life care generally reflect Western practice frameworks; there are limited data on withdrawal of treatment for children in China.MethodsWithdrawal of treatment for children in the pediatric intensive care unit of a regional children’s hospital in eastern China from 2006 to 2017 was studied retrospectively. Withdrawal of treatment was categorized as medical withdrawal or premature withdrawal. The guardian’s self-reported reasons for abandoning the child’s treatment were recorded from 2011.ResultsThe incidence of withdrawal of treatment for children (...) in the PICU decreased significantly; for premature withdrawal the 3-year average of 15.1% in 2006–2008 decreased to 1.9% in 2015–2017. The overall incidence of withdrawal of care reduced over the time period, and withdrawal of therapy by guardians was the main contributor to the overall reduction. The median age of children for whom treatment was withdrawn increased from 14.5 months in 2006 to 40.5 months in 2017. Among the reasons given by guardians of children whose treatment was withdrawn in 2011–2017, “illness is too severe” ranked first, accounting for 66.3%, followed by “condition has been improved”. Only a few guardians ascribed treatment withdrawal to economic reasons.ConclusionsThe frequency of withdrawal of medical therapy has changed over time in this children’s hospital PICU, and parental decision-making has been a large part of the change. (shrink)

Background eHealth was widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much attention was given to the technical aspects of eHealth, such as infrastructure and cost, while the soft skill of compassion remained underexplored. The wide belief in compassionate care is more compatible with in-person interactions but difficult to deliver via e-platforms where personal and environmental clues were lacking urges studying this topic. Purpose to explore the experience of delivering compassionate care via an eHealth platform among healthcare professionals working to contain the (...) COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A qualitative study design with an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was used. Twenty healthcare professionals (fifteen nurses and five physicians) who provided care using technology platforms, such as telephone hotlines, mobile apps, and social media, were interviewed individually. Ethical considerations Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board. Results Participants stated that “eHealth enabled compassionate care during the pandemic” by ensuring patient care availability and accessibility. They shared experiences of “communicating compassionate care via eHealth” with suggestions of addressing patients’ needs with empathy, adopting a structured protocol to guide eHealth communication, and using more advanced visual-media methods to promote human-to-human interaction. They recommended “setting realistic mutual expectations” considering the limitations of eHealth in handling complex health situations and staffing shortages. Participants considered “low eHealth literacy hinders compassion.” Additionally, they recommended the need for “institutional/system-level support to foster compassionate care.” Conclusion Participants recognized the importance of integrating compassion into eHealth services. Promotion of compassionate care requires standardization of eHealth services with institutional and system-level support. This also includes preparing adequate staffing who can communicate compassionate care via eHealth, set realistic expectation, and adjust communication to eHealth literacy level while meeting the needs of their patients. (shrink)

Guanxi as one of the key factors leading to business success in China (PRC) has ironically been synonymous with bribery. This raises some serious questions: should Western foreign firms do business in China? How should they do business with Chinese firms? This study investigated the relationship between guanxi orientation and cognitive moral development in an attempt to determine whether the level of guanxi orientation of Chinese business people affects their ethical reasoning. Based on a classification of Chinese enterprises (Nee, 1992), (...) it was found that Chinese enterprises rely on guanxi for business to different extents. However, their levels of cognitive moral development are not significantly different, suggesting that guanxi orientation has very little to do with ethical reasoning (as captured through an established measure of cognitive moral development). Furthermore, time in profession was found to positively affect guanxi orientation; however, age failed to predict guanxi orientation and education turned out to be a negative predictor of guanxi orientation. (shrink)

Enterprise philanthropy is practiced in a very unique and rudimentary form in China. Based on a unique random survey data on 3837 Chinese private enterprises conducted in 31 provinces of China in 2006, I find the significant positive relationship between enterprise philanthropy donation and enterprise profitability, and the result supports the political and institutional power view of enterprise philanthropy in the latest development of China. Simply put, Chinese private enterprises carried out philanthropy activities to better protect property rights and nurture (...) political connections, which in turn, leads to better enterprise profitability. The␣result is even stronger in institutions weaker provinces. (shrink)

What signals do firms in emerging economies send to stakeholders when they adopt corporate social responsibility practices? We argue that in emerging economies, firms that adopt CSR practices positively signal investors that their firms have superior capabilities for filling institutional voids. From an institution-based view, we hypothesize that the institutional environment moderates the signaling effect of CSR on a firm’s financial performance. Based on a sample of firms from ten Asian emerging economies, we find a positive relationship between CSR practices (...) and financial performance. This positive relationship is stronger in the less developed capital market than in the more developed one. The financial benefits of CSR practices are also more salient in the low information diffusion market than in the high one. We emphasize that signaling theory and the institution-based view can jointly contribute to the CSR literature. (shrink)

An inclusive vision of mathematics-- its beauty, its humanity, and its power to build virtues that help us all flourish. For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas. In this profound book, written for a diverse audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award-winning mathematician and educator weaves personal reflections, puzzles, and stories to (...) show how mathematics meets basic human desires and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. Readers will explore mathematical concepts-- and see how mathematical thinking can even fulfill such longings as for love, play, freedom, justice, and community. Some lessons come from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother's, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher Jackson's letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can-- and must-- be open to all. (shrink)

It is well known that totem worship is an early product of human society, from which it can be argued that East and West share a common cultural origin, although totem worship cannot be identified as the initial origin of all human civilizations, it is the common premise from which all subsequent clans, tribes, and groups emerged. When societies face upheaval and change and breed conflict and chaos, salvation may be found in the common cultural origins of humankind. This paper (...) argues that both Durkheim and Confucius when faced with social anomie caused by the "crisis of European civilization" and the "collapse of ritual and music" (Libeng Yuehuai禮崩樂壞) respectively, traced their roots back to the sacredness of primitive witchcraft activities, including totem worship and the law of taboos, as the elixir of "healing" the society, which is "the same way"; However, due to the inherent differences in cultural background and subjectivity, the two have embarked on different paths of development and formed different social paradigms and interpersonal relationships, which are "different returns". (shrink)

This paper documents that business ethics has positive impacts upon the development of intellectual capital. Knowledge has become the most important asset of modern businesses, and this study argues that business ethics is associated with the development of intangible knowledge resources—intellectual capital. Businesses with ethical values at the core reinforce ethical conducts and successfully build trust with their various stakeholders, leading to the formation of an ethical and trustworthy corporate culture and a positive corporate environment. Thus, in this reasoning, an (...) ethical approach to business can encourage open communication, problems solving, knowledge sharing and creativity among employees to increase organisational capital; enhance interactions and relationships with suppliers, customers and other stakeholders to increase social capital; attract and retain good talent to increase human capital. Questionnaire survey is adopted as the research method with businesses in the electronic and information technology industries in Taiwan as sample. The results suggest that business ethics is associated with increased intellectual capital. Thus, this study demonstrates that the development of intellectual capital is in line with strengthened ethics. It contributes to the literature through combining research on business ethics with intellectual capital theories and extends the extant intellectual capital literature. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate factors associated with seriously ill patients’ preferences for their family and physicians making resuscitation decisions on their behalf. Using SUPPORT II data, the study revealed that, among 362 seriously ill patients who were experiencing pain, 277 (77%) answered that they would want their family and physicians to make resuscitation decisions for them instead of their own wishes being followed if they were to lose decision-making capacity. Even after controlling for other variables, patients (...) who preferred the option of undergoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the future were twice as likely, and those who had had ventilator treatment were four-fifths less likely, to rely on their family and physicians than those who did not want CPR (odds ratio (OR)-2.28; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.18-4.38) or those who had not received ventilator treatment (OR-0.23; 95% CI 0.06-0.90). Psychological variables (anxiety, quality of life, and depression), symptomatic variables (severity of pain and activities of daily living) and the existence of surrogates were not significantly associated with patients’ preferences for having their family and physicians make resuscitation decisions for them. Age was not a significant factor for predicting the decision-making role after controlling for other variables. (shrink)

Guanxi (literally interpersonal connections) is in essence a network of resource coalition-based stakeholders sharing resources for survival, and it plays a key role in achieving business success in China. However, the salience of guanxi stakeholders varies: not all guanxi relationships are necessary, and among the necessary guanxi participants, not all are equally important. A hierarchical stakeholder model of guanxi is developed drawing upon Mitchell et al.’s (1997) stakeholder salience theory and Anderson’s (1982) constituency theory. As an application of instrumental stakeholder (...) theory, the model dimensionalizes the notion of stakeholder salience, and distinguishes between and among internal and external guanxi, core, major, and peripheral guanxi, and primary and secondary guanxi stakeholders. Guanxi management principles are developed based on a hierarchy of guanxi priorities and management specializations. The goal of this application of instrumental stakeholder theory is to construct, for Western business firms in China, a means to reliably identify guanxi partners by employing the principles of effective guanxi. These principles are described in the form of testable propositions that advance social scientific research in this area of international business ethics. (shrink)

This article reflects on Collins’s classic work, The Credential Society, situating his critique of educational credentialism within broader ‘conflict sociology’. The discussion reappraises Collins’s work in the context of the ‘new credentialism’, ‘new learning’ and the race, gender and class concerns raised in current debates on higher education. The article characterizes contemporary higher education as being trapped in a Procrustean dynamic: techno-utopianism with job displacement and expansionism with declining public support. Collins attempts to escape the legacy of structural-functionalism through conflict (...) sociology or predictions of systemic crisis. This is contrasted with his contemporary, Herbert Gintis’s eclectic attempt to construct a transdisciplinary social science. The key problem of marketized inequality is linked to the sociology of absences in conflict sociology, and it is argued that inequalities of class, race, gender and coloniality in higher education and credentialism can no longer be ignored. (shrink)

Although Korean society has begun to seek a way of utilizing advance directives, there is not much known about the factors influencing the average Korean person’s preference toward advance directives. The purpose of this study was to examine factors, in addition to demographic variables, influencing preferences regarding advance directives. These include: to what extent people’s awareness of advance directives, preferences of extending their life at the end of life, experience of illness and medical care, and family functioning independently influence the (...) preferences toward advance directives. The participants were 382 community-dwelling Korean people. The data analysis was performed using hierarchical multiple logistic regression analysis. The findings showed that a majority of Korean people had a positive preference on advance directives and the factors influencing their preferences for advance directives were the preferences against the use of life-sustaining treatment at the end of life, a good self-rated heath status, and an unsatisfactory family functioning. (shrink)