Social distance, as a non-static cognitive attribute of acceptance among particular groups across different contexts, has been resemioticized during the coronavirus crisis and legalized worldwide to reduce global strain on healthcare systems and prevent deaths. Concerning this, brand designers have tried to persuade the brand community to benefit from products or services safely by staying away from others as much as possible instead of in-person contact. This research was conducted to discover the semiosis process of social-distancing resemioticization through creating values (...) of brands during the post-coronavirus crisis. The corpus consists of 124 brands – all sampled purposely from 2019 to 2021 – which was investigated via a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods using an integrated model in a functional perspective. All the results highlight the fact that, although brand designers have attempted to creatively resemioticize social-distancing during the coronavirus crisis as a means of increasing or enriching brand values, still some semiosis layers of brand discourse have been overlooked. Pertaining to this, the authors try to apply a new perspective of marketing semiotics to appraise consumer investments in light of a socio-cultural setting by conducting an inquiry about the semiosis of individual brand discourses to manage consumer perceptions regarding brand equity. (shrink)

Face perception is crucial in all social animals. Recent studies have shown that pre-stimulus oscillations of brain activity modulate the perceptual performance of face vs. non-face stimuli, specifically under challenging conditions. However, it is unclear if this effect also occurs during simple tasks, and if so in which brain regions. Here we used magnetoencephalography and a 1-back task in which participants decided if the two sequentially presented stimuli were the same or not in each trial. The aim of the study (...) was to explore the effect of pre-stimulus alpha oscillation on the perception of face and non-face stimuli. Our results showed that pre-stimulus activity in the left occipital face area modulated responses in the intra-parietal sulcus at around 170 ms after the presentation of human face stimuli. This effect was also found after participants were shown images of motorcycles. In this case, the IPS was modulated by pre-stimulus activity in the right OFA and the right fusiform face area. We conclude that pre-stimulus modulation of post-stimulus response also occurs during simple tasks and is therefore independent of behavioral responses. (shrink)

Promoting innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing has become essential as it endows companies with competitive advantages to thrive in today's complex business environment. This study investigates the role of workplace spirituality in inducing innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing based on the social exchange theory and the spillover theory. It also looks at the previously unexplored mediating function of employee engagement in the relationship between workplace spirituality and the outcomes above. Additionally, it examines the interactive effect of workplace spirituality (...) and individual spirituality on employee engagement. Two waves of survey data were collected from 538 employees and their managers working in the IT sector in Pakistan. This study contributes to the expanding corpus of research on workplace spirituality, confirming that the latter positively influence innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing. The mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between workplace spirituality and innovative work behaviour and employee wellbeing is also significant. Further, the results confirm that the influence of workplace spirituality on employee engagement is contingent on the degree of individual spirituality. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Moral distress has emerged as a significant concern for critical care nurses, particularly due to the complex and demanding care provided to critically ill patients in critical care units. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new ethical challenges and changes in clinical practice, further exacerbating the experience of moral distress among these nurses. This systematic review compares the factors influencing moral distress among critical care nurses before and during the COVID-19 pandemic to gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of (...) the pandemic on moral distress. For this systematic review, PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest, Web of Science, medRxiv, bioRxiv, Embase, and Google Scholar were all utilized in the search. The search covered articles published from 2012 to December 2022, encompassing a 10-year timeframe to capture relevant research on moral distress among critical care nurses. In total, 52 articles were included in this systematic review. The findings indicate that personal, caring-related, and organizational factors can influence nurses' moral distress. Before the pandemic, factors including futile and end-of-life care, conflicts with physicians, nurse performance and authority, poor teamwork, decision-making regarding treatment processes and patient care, limited human resources and equipment, medical errors, patient restraints, and nurses' age and work experience affect critical care nurses' moral distress. Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, factors contributing to moral distress include futile and end-of-life care, fear of contracting and spreading COVID-19, decision-making about treatment processes, poor teamwork, and being female. This study revealed that the factors contributing to moral distress were approximately similar in both periods. Futile care and end-of-life issues were critical care nurses' primary causes of moral distress. Implementing prevention strategies and reducing these underlying factors could decrease this major issue and improve the quality of care. (shrink)

Recent arguments claim that behavioral science has focused – to its detriment – on the individual over the system when construing behavioral interventions. In this commentary, we argue that tackling economic inequality using both framings in tandem is invaluable. By studying individuals who have overcome inequality, “positive deviants,” and the system limitations they navigate, we offer potentially greater policy solutions.

Karl-Heinz Narjes, Scientific Commissioner for the European Economic Community, revealed how profoundly views of embryo research differ when he stated, "We cannot have a situation in which the same research might lead to a Nobel Prize in some member states... and to prison in others." Through 19 essays contained in this volume, the editors seek "to scrutinize the scientific, ethical, public policy, and legal issues which must be addressed wherever the new technology exists".