Undoubtedly, the internet has become the most convenient and efficient communication and service delivery channel adopted by most government agencies, referred to as eGovernment. This study explores how eGovernment efficiency influences users’ subjective wellbeing, using trust as a covert stimulus with the capacity to alter individuals’ overt behavior. Covert and overt stimuli act as significant factors influencing the relationship between citizens and the online environment, moderated by socio-demographic characteristics. Using situation–organism–behavior–consequence theory, we propose a research model consisting of online environment (...) eGovernment efficiency influencing trust development, which in turn influences utilization, generating an impact on an individuals’ SWB. We followed the structural equation modeling approach to analyze the data survey N = 300, using Amos statistical techniques. Results reveal that the correlation between eGovernment efficiency and trust is positive and strong, trust and utilization is positive and moderate, and the correlation between utilization and SWB is positive and very strong. Stepwise regression analysis reveals that the control variables affect the relationship between eGovernment efficiency and trust. In the regression model: the highest education level explained 36% of the variance ; adding age increased the variance explained to 39%, and adding internet use frequency increased the variance explained to 41%. This study develops theoretical concepts of eGovernment use and how it affects citizens by indicating the psychological and behavioral situations as antecedents and mediators influencing SWB. It also provides practical suggestions for improving systems to correlate users’ feelings and behavior patterns to motivate trusting behavior, positively impacting users’ SWB to benefit citizens effectively. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship and its influence on the development of the economy are significant in competitive global advancement. Entrepreneurs need entrepreneurial intentions to improve the commercial environment of the country. Therefore, studying entrepreneurial intentions’ influencing predictors is vital for business development. We collected data from small and medium-sized enterprises employees of the developing country and used partial least square structured equation modeling to analyze the proposed relationships. The results assist the literature extension and practically contribute to developing entrepreneurs’ intentions through education and (...) opportunity recognition. The findings aid the institutions in improving course planning and establishing practical business setups. This study facilitates the government’s ideas of commencing entrepreneurial businesses through proper resource provisions for the entrepreneurs. (shrink)

In this paper, we critically interrogate the benefits of an interdisciplinary and theoretically diverse dialogue between ‘local food’ and ‘alternative food networks’ and outline how this dialogue might be enriched by a closer engagement with discourses of food sovereignty and the politics of scale. In arguing for a shift towards a greater emphasis on food sovereignty, we contend that contemporary discourses of food security are inadequate for the ongoing task of ensuring a just and sustainable economy of food. Further, rather (...) than treating the local and the global as ontologically given categories around which to contest the politics of food, it is our contention that recognising the socio-spatial aspects of the politics of scale has the potential to reinvigorate discourses of food security, food sovereignty and AFNs. Understanding scale as both fixed to a degree as well as contingent and dynamic has implications for an understanding of the role of food systems, for how the rescaled state privileges certain food systems and the possibilities for resistance through ‘jumping scale’ and food utopias. All of these aspects are significant if we are to fully comprehend and contest the challenges of envisioning and enacting real utopias of food sovereignty. (shrink)

In this article, I use ethnographic and historical evidence to consider marriage as a particular locus of what Maria Lugones has called “the colonial/modern gender system.” By bringing specific research on marriage among the matrilineal Asante of Kumasi, Ghana, together with a consideration of global ideals of marriage and gender, I argue that marriage and the family are key sites through which the subjugation of women in Africa can be understood, but that this requires local and historical contextualization. To do (...) this, I trace the emergence and current local expression of “companionate marriage,” an ideal of marriage that is associated with romantic love and personal choice, and that is often seen as a gender-progressive marriage ideal. In Kumasi, “companionate” ideals began to emerge during the colonial period, not as an empowering force, but in complicated interactions with other gendered changes that limited wives' claims to husbands' reciprocal support and isolated women from their matrilineal kin. Today, customary marriage is often considered harmful to women and distinct from other forms of marriage; however, I show that such assumptions impose categorial differences where none may exist, and occlude the complexities of women's lives and struggles. (shrink)

The hypothesis that word representations are emotionally impoverished in a second language (L2) has variable support. However, this hypothesis has only been tested using tasks that present words in isolation or that require laboratory-specific decisions. Here, we recorded eye movements for 34 bilinguals who read sentences in their L2 with no goal other than comprehension, and compared them to 43 first language readers taken from our prior study. Positive words were read more quickly than neutral words in the L2 across (...) first-pass reading time measures. However, this emotional advantage was absent for negative words for the earliest measures. Moreover, negative words but not positive words were influenced by concreteness, frequency and L2 proficiency in a manner similar to neutral words. Taken together, the findings suggest that only negative words are at risk of emotional disembodiment during L2 reading, perhaps because a positivity bias in L2 experiences ensures that positive words are emotionally grounded. (shrink)

Traditionally, mainstream psychology mostly presented religion in a negative light. However, recent years have witnessed a growing realization that religion has a substantial role to play in improving physical and mental health. Given the importance of religion, the American Psychological Association has division 36 “Psychology of religion.” But the perspective of mainstream psychology does not acknowledge the spiritual nature of human beings and their connection to God. Islamic psychology is one of the religion-based perspectives which acknowledges it. This perspective has (...) also attracted the attention of Western psychologists. Three different trends have been identified in this area: the Islamic filter approach, the comparison approach, and the Islamic psychology approach. However, despite more than 40 years of work, there is a considerable lack of progress in the development of this paradigm. The present article discussed the emergence and challenges in the development of this new perspective. Moreover, we suggest that the research paradigms of Western social and behavioral sciences are useful for developing Islamic psychology. (shrink)

Muslim physicians and Islamic jurists analyze the moral dimensions of biomedicine using different tools and processes. While the deliberations of these two classes of experts involve judgments about the deliverables of the other's respective fields, Islamic jurists and Muslim physicians rarely engage in discussions about the constructs and epistemic frameworks that motivate their analyses. The lack of dialogue creates gaps in knowledge and leads to imprecise guidance. In order to address these discursive and conceptual gaps we describe the sources of (...) knowledge and reasoning employed by Islamic jurists and clinicians to resolve the question of when a patient must seek healthcare. As we examine both the scriptural evidence and legal reasoning of jurists and the types of medical evidence used by clinicians to address the same question, we draw attention to the epistemic frameworks and constructs at play and identify how constructs from one field may sharpen the deliberative exercises of the other. Hence our work advances discourses at the intersection of Islam and medicine and offers building blocks for a comprehensive Islamic framework that fully integrates the deliverables of medical science within the deliberations of Islamic jurists. (shrink)

Predictive processing has begun to offer new insights into the nature of conscious experience—but the link is not straightforward. A wide variety of systems may be described as predictive machines, raising the question: what differentiates those for which it makes sense to talk about conscious experience? One possible answer lies in the involvement of a higher-order form of prediction error, termed expected free energy. In this paper we explore under what conditions the minimization of this new quantity might underpin conscious (...) experience. Our suggestion is that the minimisation of Expected Free Energy is not in itself sufficient for the occurrence of conscious experience. Instead, it is relevant only insofar as it helps deliver what Ward et al. ( 2011 ) have previously described as a _sense of our own poise over an action space_. Perceptual experience, we will argue, is nothing other than the process that puts current actions in contact with goals and intentions, enabling some creatures to know the space of options that their current situation makes available. This proposal fits with recent work suggesting a deep link between conscious contents and contents computed at an ‘intermediate’ level of processing, apt for controlling action. (shrink)

Among the exciting prospects raised by advocates of predictive processing [PP] is the offer of a systematic description of our neural activity suitable for drawing explanatory bridges to the structure of conscious experience. Yet the gulf to cross seems wide. For, as critics of PP have argued, our visual experience certainly doesn’t seem probabilistic.While Clark proposes a means to make PP compatible with the experience of a determinate world, I argue that we should not rush to do so. Two notions (...) of determinacy are conflated in the claim that perception is determinate: ‘univocality’ and ‘full detail’. The former, as Clark argues, is only to be expected in any PP agent that models its world for the purpose of acting on it. But as Husserl argued, and as perceptual psychology has borne out, we significantly overestimate the degree of detail with which we perceive a univocal world.This second form of indeterminacy is due not to the probabilistic nature of PP’s model, but rather to its hierarchical structure, with increasingly coarse-grained representations as we move further from the sensory periphery. A PP system may, or may not, deliver a univocal hypothesis at each of these levels. An action-oriented PP system would only be expected to do so only at the level needed for successful action guidance. A naïve reporter’s overestimation of the degree of determinate detail in their visual experience can thereby be accounted for with a more gradual version of the ‘refrigerator light’ effect: we experience determinate details just to the degree that they’re needed – immediately as they’re needed. (shrink)

If states have the moral authority to decide their memberships by denying citizenship, I argue that they may also strip citizenship, from law-abiding members, for the same reasons. The only real difference is that when states revoke citizenship they may need to compensate people for their prior contributions, but that is not unlike what frequently occurs in divorce. Once just termination rules are established, stripping citizenship could become, like divorce, an everyday event. Partly because of this implication, we should reject (...) the membership authority of states. (shrink)

Darwin’s explanation for the natural phenomenon of evolution has been well established in the scientific community. That is a generally accepted historical fact, even if the situation has been very nuanced all along. If an alternative theory is to get established at all, it would have to take almost the same route that Darwin’s theory took. While the hair-splitting philosophical exegesis keeps moving the intellectual scholarship forward, some individuals from the “indefinite community” would have to decide to “charitably” put their (...) “faith” in an interpretation of the theory, put this abductive interpretation to a set of empirical tests, and “hope” that this also solves their pressing problems. Effectively, this.. (shrink)

The article argues that a critical encounter with pre-modern literatures from the national past is long overdue under the impact of a globalized discourse of sexuality. Its effects are already felt at the level of both pedagogy and literary reading, one reconstituting the other, in the ‘global classroom’, a self-conscious pedagogical space imagined by the new educational policy to bring about a globally accredited cultural homogeneity. The case study comes from teaching erotic poetry at an Indian university, from the joint (...) literary complex of Hindi and Urdu in South Asia, a theme uncomfortably located in national culture not just because of its sexuality but its association with non-national linguistic elements which the article terms ‘Indo-Islamic’. The overlapping of the sexual modern with the Indo-Islamic resurfaces a tension in the nationalized body of literary writing in Hindi/Urdu, the major ‘national’ languages of South Asia. This encounter of erotic poetry in old Hindi and Urdu with globalized sexuality, the article shows, offers a chance to reflect on how literary studies are being reshaped by the assumptions of a monolingual, monocultural global sexuality in our nationalist times. (shrink)

Given that personal source of information is preferred by the customers over company-generated marketing communications, promoting advocacy behavior among customers is of much importance for every organization. Literature suggests that an organization's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities significantly influence individual behavior. However, the advocacy behavior of customers (ADB), from a CSR perspective, did not receive due attention. To address this literature gap, the current study attempts to explore the relationship among CSR and ADB with the intervening role of brand admiration (...) (BA). To collect the data, customers of a large fast-food service organization in Pakistan were approached. The proposed relationships were tested through the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The statistical evidence verifies a positive link between CSR and ADB, while BA mediated this relationship. These findings will be supportive to the fast-food business to realize the critical role of CSR for a meaningful customer-company relationship in the face of competition. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the influence of psychological biases on the investment decision of Chinese individual investors after the pandemic of COVID-19 with a moderating role of information availability. A cross-sectional method with a quantitative research approach was employed to investigate the hypothesized relationships among variables. The snowball sampling technique was applied to collect the data through a survey questionnaire from individual investors investing in the Chinese stock market. Smart-PLS statistical software was used to analyze the data and for (...) the estimation of hypotheses. Results indicated that overconfidence, representative bias, and anchoring bias have a significant and positive influence on investment decisions during the post-Covid-19 pandemic; however, the availability bias has insignificant and negative effects on the investment decision during the post-COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, findings indicated that information availability has a significant moderating role in the relationship of psychological biases with the investment decision during the post-COVID-19 pandemic. This study contributes to the body of knowledge regarding behavior finance, psychological biases, and investment decision in emerging stock markets. The findings of the present study improve the understanding that how investors’ psychology affects their investment decisions. (shrink)

Current organizations are underpinned by utilitarian ethics of Modernity. Pure economic motive driven organizations detach themselves from larger societal interest. Rising number of corporate scandals and intraorganizational income inequalities are breeding similar trends in society at large. Current organizations base their competitive advantage on resources and capabilities which boils down to economic supremacy at all cost whether it is named I/o or RBV of the firm. This theoretical article posits Ethics-based Trust as the main competency and capability for attaining sustained (...) competitive advantage. It in no way condemns utility view of the firms but treats it as a natural yet secondary outcome of genuine ethicality of the firm. Cultivating an ethical culture in the firm through identifying antecedents, organizational practices, and the outcomes where profitability is an automatic but secondary outcome under the supremacy of ethics is detailed in the multilevel model presented in this article. The main call of this article is to posit ethics and morality over and above short-term profits so that organizations fulfill their trustee role for society through enacting socio-humanistic theories within organizations. A brief analysis of the proposed ethical theory of firm is undertaken in light of the “schooling” notion in the contemporary organization theory literature. (shrink)

This article examines crowds, leaders, and media after the 1979 Revolution of Iran. It focuses on media that contests hegemonic power by acting as a “guide” for an otherwise “leaderless movement,” especially in contexts where conventional “guides” are illegitimate or absent. It argues that such media reveals the partisan reality of political order obscured by the myth of leadership, the idea that the presence of a leader implies a political order. I focus on International Women’s Day 1979 when crowds protesting (...) the Ayatollah Khomeini’s decision to enforce the mandatory veil were caught in a paradox: as subjects of history and objects of representation. With focus on the non-partisan newspaper _Ayandegan_, the article shows how the crowds, objects of representation, became political subjects, as potential guides. Despite its efforts to remain neutral, _Ayandegan_ became partisan when it unwittingly challenged the “charismatic leader” by giving presence to the partisan crowds. The mediated relation between leader and led on 8 March 1979 and after is instructive for our understanding of the role media can play in leaderless movements. (shrink)

La posición de Vico sobre el antiguo Egipto tenía origen en el debate seicentesco sobre la supremacía del saber egipcio . En línea con la historiografía protestante, Vico muestra que los egipcios habían desarrollado sólo un saber civil y que sus conocimientos filosóficos eran aquéllos aprendidos de los hebreos.PALABRAS CLAVE: Vico, hebreos, egipcios, sabiduría antigua, historiografía protestante.Vico’s attitude towards the ancient Egypt had its roots in the Seventeenth Century debate on the supremacy of Egyptian wisdom . In agreement with protestant (...) historiography, Vico shows that Egyptians had only developed a kind of civil knowledge, whereas their philosophical knowledge had been received from Hebrews.KEYWORDS: Vico, Hebrews, Egyptians, ancient wisdom, protestant historiography. (shrink)

Though Ali Shariati is well-known as the “ideologue” of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, this essay considers Shariati conversely as a student of revolution. It begins by posing a distinction between the apprentice and the autodidact through reference to Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan and introduces a third term, the collaborator, that is crucial to Shariati’s account of counter-pedagogy. The essay then reconstructs Shariati’s critique of the pedagogical state. There, he recalls resisting interpellation by learning from other pasts, refusing instruction, (...) and learning from others. Finally, I show changes in how Shariati conceptualized self-transformation, from an autodidactic process of soul-searching to a collaborative process that gives soul to a collective. On becoming immersed in the sounds of his compatriots grieving the martyrs of struggle, Shariati attests to being a student of history: the curriculum of a people becoming, the history of struggle, and its instructors, those who modeled it, pivoted around a refusal to be instructed. Overall, this essay develops an account of media environments as informal pedagogical spaces. (shrink)

Predictive processing accounts of neural function view the brain as a kind of prediction machine that forms models of its environment in order to anticipate the upcoming stream of sensory stimulation. These models are then continuously updated in light of incoming error signals. Predictive processing has offered a powerful new perspective on cognition, action, and perception. In this chapter we apply the insights from predictive processing to the study of emotions. The upshot is a picture of emotion as inseparable from (...) perception and cognition, and a key feature of the embodied mind. (shrink)

This article provides an introduction to plagiarism and the numerous negative aspects associated with it. Some examples from history have also been provided along with their outcomes. There are different types of plagiarism with varying legal and social aspects. The taxonomy of plagiarism is built by classifying it, with respect to the method involved in plagiarism, the form in which it happens or the intention of the plagiarist. The strategies suggested in the literature to avoid plagiarism are organized into individual (...) and organizational levels. Individuals can adopt strategies to build habits of avoiding plagiarism and focus on their original and innovative way of thinking. Similarly, institutions can make policies to cope with plagiarism and hence maintain their reputation. In this paper, the focus is not on mentioning the plagiarism detection methods; rather we believe that building awareness in the people about plagiarism outcomes is more important than teaching them about the different methodologies used for detection. Some students avoid plagiarism detection as if playing a game and it can be only avoided by educating them in ethics. (shrink)

Despite the seemingly widespread agreement that racial and ethnic immigration criteria are always wrong, some cases seem potentially permissible and, in particular, do not seem to wrong either disfavored members or nonmembers. I demonstrate that an “antidiscrimination” approach to understanding when and why discrimination is wrong provides a compelling general explanation for this. The explanation’s key ingredient is the concept of global social status: many groups sharing a race or ethnicity have a social status beyond, and that can differ from, (...) their status in a particular state. (shrink)

This essay reviews the 38th International Conference of the Husserl Circle held at Marquette University, Wisconsin through an elaboration of the three major themes covered at the conference as well as providing a critical perspective on works presented.

Theological engagement with quantum mechanics has been dominated by the Copenhagen interpretation, failing to reflect the fact that philosophers and physicists alike are increasingly moving away from the Copenhagen interpretation in favor of other approaches. One such approach, Hugh Everett's so-called Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), is being taken increasingly seriously. As the MWI's credibility grows, it is imperative that metaphysicians, theologians, and philosophers of religion engage with its ideas and their implications. This article does just that, setting out some implications (...) of Everettian Quantum Mechanics that are particularly relevant to theism. It argues that taking seriously the radical consequences of the Everett interpretation means facing at least three major worries for theism pertaining to personal identity, the problem of evil, and salvation. The article concludes by calling on theologians and philosophers of religion to address these worries, in order that these matters of religious significance remain both coherent and credible if the MWI turns out to be correct. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the rationality and plausibility of the Muslim faith and the Quran, and in particular how they can be interrogated and understood through western analytical philosophy. It also explores how Islam can successfully engage with the challenges posed by secular thinking. The Quran and the Secular Mind will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic philosophy, philosophy of religion, Middle East studies, and political Islam.

The widely accepted understanding in contemporary discourse is that race and ethnicity fundamentally arose as social constructs devoid of inherent biological or scientific significance.1 Despite this consensus, discussions abound, including in this journal,2 regarding the extent and manner in which racial and ethnic categorisations should influence the landscape of medical research, practice and policy. In an ideal paradigm, medicine should exude an unwavering commitment to impartiality, extending care and treatment to every individual, unfettered by considerations of their racial or ethnic (...) background—an approach that can be described as ‘colour blind.’ Yet, a cursory examination of medicine’s historical trajectory and the enduring realities of human prejudices unravels a precarious tension. This tension resides at the intersection of two seemingly conflicting imperatives: one, the ethical mandate for medicine to operate as a colour-blind entity, and the other, the ethical duty to candidly acknowledge, confront and rectify the historical and contemporary shortcomings woven into the fabric of our healthcare systems. Navigating this precarious balance demands a nuanced and introspective approach, one that aspires to forge a path towards a more equitable healthcare landscape while remaining steadfastly committed to the principles of honesty, accountability and the pursuit of a just and inclusive future. Scientific journals are confronted with the intricate dilemma of addressing racist scientific records.3 The question at hand pertains to whether content tainted by racism, …. (shrink)

This paper unravels an unprecedented interplay between board gender diversity (BGD) and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disputes among Chinese A-share-listed nonfinancial companies from 2017 to 2021. Framed within a knowledge-based and sensemaking perspective of institutional frameworks, the research not only illuminates the profound impact of internal (corporate governance ratings) and external (regional institutional development) institutional factors on this intricate relationship but also brings to light a paradigm-shifting revelation. The study employed a diverse set of empirical tests, ranging from (...) ordinary least squares regression to advanced methods such as the generalized method of moments, two-stage least squares, and propensity score matching, providing a nuanced and comprehensive analysis. The findings highlight the pivotal role of female directors in significantly mitigating ESG disputes. A mechanism analysis further uncovers that internal and external institutional quality are potent positive moderators in shaping the BGD–ESG dispute dynamic. This research has profound implications, providing valuable insights for stakeholders, policymakers, and scholars, offering a comprehensive understanding of how gender diversity fosters sustainability while unravelling the intricate tapestry of internal and external institutional dynamics that shape ESG outcomes. (shrink)

We investigate the research question: Why are there very few social enterprises in China? Our findings unpack four types of institutional challenges to social entrepreneurship, as perceived by social entrepreneurs: norms of a strong role for government; misunderstood or unknown role for social enterprises; non-supportive rules and regulations; and lack of socio-cultural values and beliefs in support of social goals. We contribute to the literature on social enterprises by showing how an institutional environment may be “non-munificent,” i.e., non-supportive for the (...) existence of social enterprises and their goals, and we thus address the need for more attention to the institutional environment in which social entrepreneurship takes place. Further, by using Q-methodology on 42 social entrepreneurs along with illustrative qualitative data from interviews, we address the need to go beyond anecdotal case studies and introduce methodological plurality in social entrepreneurship research. Finally, our findings on institutional challenges provide us with an opportunity to discuss how social entrepreneurs may engage with purposive activities to overcome such challenges, leading us to initiate a conversation between the social entrepreneurship and institutional work literatures. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics has recently indicated that, at the fundamental level, temporal order is not fixed. This phenomenon, termed Indefinite Causal Order, is yet to receive metaphysical or theological engagement. We examine Indefinite Causal Order, particularly as it emerges in a 2018 photonic experiment. In this experiment, two operations A and B were shown to be in a superposition with regard to their causal order. Essentially, time, intuitively understood as fixed, flowing, and fundamental, becomes fuzzy. We argue that if Indefinite Causal (...) Order is true, this is good evidence in favor of a B‐theory of time, though such a B‐theory requires modification. We then turn to theology, suggesting that a B‐theoretic temporal ontology invites serious reconsideration of the doctrine of salvation. This paper concludes that the best explanation for salvation given a B‐theory is mind‐dependent salvific becoming, a type of psychological soteriological change that occurs through downward causation. (shrink)

Whilst considerable research exists on determining consumer responses to pre-determined statements within numerous ad ethics contexts, our understanding of consumer thoughts regarding ad ethics in general remains lacking. The purpose of our study therefore is to provide a first illustration of an emic and informant-based derivation of perceived ad ethics. The authors use multi-dimensional scaling as an approach enabling the emic, or locally derived deconstruction of perceived ad ethics. Given recent calls to develop our understanding of ad ethics in different (...) cultural contexts, and in particular within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, we use Lebanon—the most ethically charged advertising environment within MENA—as an illustrative context for our study. Results confirm the multi-faceted and pluralistic nature of ad ethics as comprising a number of dimensional themes already salient in the existing literature but in addition, we also find evidence for a bipolar relationship between individual themes. The specific pattern of inductively derived relationships is culturally bound. Implications of the findings are discussed, followed by limitations of the study and recommendations for further research. (shrink)

To determine the knowledge and ethical perception regarding organ donation amongst medical students in Karachi- Pakistan.

The contributors to the book discuss the depth-psychological concepts of amae and wa, the Ajase complex, and the filial piety complex, underscoring the ...