Many transnational corporations and international organizations have embraced corporate social responsibility to address criticisms of working and environmental conditions at subcontractors' factories. While CSR 'codes of conduct' are easy to draft, supplier compliance has been elusive. Even third-party monitoring has proven an incomplete solution. This article proposes that an alteration in the supply chain's governance, from an arms-length market model to a collaborative partnership, often will be necessary to effectuate CSR. The market model forces contractors to focus on price and (...) delivery as they compete for the lead firm's business, rendering CSR observance secondary, at best. A collaborative partnership where the lead firm gives select suppliers secure product orders and other benefits removes disincentives and adds incentives for CSR compliance. In time, the suppliers' CSR habit should shift their business philosophy toward pursuing CSR as an end in itself, regardless of buyer incentives and monitoring. This article examines these hypotheses in the context of the athletic footwear sector with Nike, Inc. and its suppliers as the specific case study. The data collected and conclusions reached offer strategies for advancing CSR beyond the superficial and often ineffectual 'code of conduct' stage. (shrink)

From a gentle and soothing voice that is personal and intimate to hums that are mystical, impersonal and maddening, this book provides an anthropology of the concept of humming through the discipline of sound studies.

Biography of Greek philosopher and teacher Socrates describing his lasting influence on human understanding.

ObjectivesHostile attribution bias is reportedly common from non-clinical population to those with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, and is known to be closely related to theory of mind. This study aimed to investigate whether ToM skills mediate the relationship among neurocognitive ability, personality traits, and attribution bias.MethodsA total of 198 non-clinical youths were recruited. To assess their neurocognitive ability and ToM skills, the participants were asked to complete Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices and the Korean version of the Reading the (...) Mind in Eyes Test. To determine their personality traits, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and interpersonal reactivity index were used. To evaluate hostile attribution bias, the Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire was administered. Path analysis and bias-corrected percentile bootstrap methods were used to estimate model fit and the parameters of the mediating effects.ResultsBased on model comparison, the best model characterized two direct pathways from psychoticism and the K-RMET to hostility attribution bias and three indirect pathways, wherein SPM, perspective taking, and psychoticism influenced hostile attribution bias through K-RMET. The final model fit indices were good [x2/df = 1.126; comparative fit index = 0.996; root mean square error of approximation = 0.026; standard root mean square residual = 0.026 and Akaike information criterion = 28.251] and the K-RMET fully mediated the association between SPM, perspective taking, psychoticism, and hostile attribution bias.ConclusionThe main findings suggested that ToM skills, such as the RMET, play an important role in explaining the relationship among neurocognitive ability, personality traits, and hostile attribution bias. ToM skills and a remediation strategy may need to be developed to balance the enhanced hostility bias that underlies the paranoia. (shrink)

Long noncoding RNAs have been described in cell lines and various whole tissues, but lncRNA analysis of development in vivo is limited. Here, we comprehensively analyze lncRNA expression for the adult mouse subventricular zone neural stem cell lineage. We utilize complementary genome-wide techniques including RNA-seq, RNA CaptureSeq, and ChIP-seq to associate specific lncRNAs with neural cell types, developmental processes, and human disease states. By integrating data from chromatin state maps, custom microarrays, and FACS purification of the subventricular zone lineage, we (...) stringently identify lncRNAs with potential roles in adult neurogenesis. shRNA-mediated knockdown of two such lncRNAs, Six3os and Dlx1as, indicate roles for lncRNAs in the glial-neuronal lineage specification of multipotent adult stem cells. Our data and workflow thus provide a uniquely coherent in vivo lncRNA analysis and form the foundation of a user-friendly online resource for the study of lncRNAs in development and disease. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. (shrink)

Shopping cart abandonment remains a challenge for many e-retailers despite the continued growth of the e-commerce industry worldwide. However, the issue of online shopping cart abandonment has not been explored extensively in the literature. Grounded by the stimulus-organism-response model, this study explores a sequential mediation model comprising consumers' wait for lower prices as an antecedent, hesitation at checkout and OSCA as mediators, perceived transaction inconvenience as a moderator, and decision to buy from a land-based retailer as an outcome. An online (...) questionnaire was designed and distributed to 883 online consumers in Mainland China. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the survey data. The results show that waiting for lower prices positively influences hesitation at checkout, and subsequently, impacts both OSCA and DBLR. Hesitation at checkout and OSCA play sequential mediating roles in the framework path. In addition, perceived transaction inconvenience strengthens the relationship between waiting for lower prices and hesitation at checkout. Overall, this study contributes to theory and serves as a guideline for e-retailers in reducing the OSCA rate. (shrink)

SignificanceElectrical burns can cause severe damage to the nervous system, resulting in autonomic dysfunction with reduced cerebral perfusion. However, few studies have investigated these consequences.AimTo elucidate changes in prefrontal cerebral hemodynamics using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during the head-up tilt table test (HUT) for patients with electrical burns.ApproachWe recruited 17 patients with acute electrical burns within 1 week after their accidents and 10 healthy volunteers. The NIRS parameters acquired using an fNIRS device attached to the forehead were analyzed in five (...) distinct HUT phases.ResultsBased on their HUT response patterns, patients with electrical burns were classified into the group with abnormal HUT results (APG, n = 4) or normal HUT results (NPG, n = 13) and compared with the healthy control (HC, n = 10) participants. We found trends in hemodynamic changes during the HUT that distinguished HC, NPG, and APG. Reduced cerebral perfusion and decreased blood oxygenation during the HUT were found in both the NPG and APG groups. Patients with electrical burns had autonomic dysfunction compared to the HC participants.ConclusionsUsing fNIRS, we observed that acute-stage electrical burn injuries could affect cerebral perfusion. (shrink)

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are essential for effective organizational functioning. Decisions by employees to engage in these important discretionary behaviors are based on how they make sense of the organizational context. Using fairness heuristic theory, we tested two important OCB predictors: manager trustworthiness and interactional justice. In the process, we control for the effects of dispositional factors (propensity to trust) and for system-based organizational fairness (procedural and distributive justice). Results, based on surveys collected from 120 employee–supervisor dyads, indicate that manager (...) trustworthiness explains variance in OCBs over and above the variance accounted for by interactional fairness. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a new, rapidly-growing class of organizations governed by smart contracts. Here we describe how researchers can contribute to the emerging science of DAOs and other digitally-constituted organizations. From granular privacy primitives to mechanism designs to model laws, we identify high-impact problems in the DAO ecosystem where existing gaps might be tackled through a new data set or by applying tools and ideas from existing research fields such as political science, computer science, economics, law, and organizational (...) science. Our recommendations encompass exciting research questions as well as promising business opportunities. We call on the wider research community to join the global effort to invent the next generation of organizations. (shrink)

Limited Aggregation is the view that when there are competing moral claims that demand our attention, we should sometimes satisfy the largest aggregate of claims, depending on the strength of the claims in question. In recent years, philosophers such as Patrick Tomlin and Alastair Norcross have argued that Limited Aggregation violates a number of rational choice principles such as Transitivity, Separability, and Contraction Consistency. Current versions of Limited Aggregation are what may be called Comparative Approaches because they involve assessing the (...) relative strengths of various claims. In this paper, we offer a non-comparative version of Limited Aggregation, what we call the Threshold Approach. It states that there is a non-relative threshold that separates various claims. We demonstrate that the Threshold Approach does not violate rational choice principles such as Transitivity, Separability, and Contraction Consistency, and we show that potential concerns regarding such a view are surmountable. (shrink)

We attempt to understand the personal incentives that motivate corporate insiders to engage in unethical behavior such as delayed trade disclosure. Delayed disclosure affects corporate transparency and other shareholders in the firm potentially suffer investment losses because they are unaware of insiders’ activities. Using archival data from the 300 largest Australian firms between 2007 and 2011, the results show that risk factors such as insider age and tenure and wealth effects in the form of insider shareholdings affect the likelihood of (...) delayed reporting. Governance positions such as committee membership mitigate this behavior. Our study highlights the importance of considering individual insider’s wealth and risk factors. The self-monitoring role of governance positions is also indicative of the effectiveness of internal corporate governance in the prevention of illegal insider behavior. (shrink)

Singapore, a highly affluent island city-state located in Southeast Asia, has increasingly leveraged new assisted reproductive technologies (ART) to overcome its dismal fertility rates in recent years. A new frontier in ART is preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) for polygenic risk scores (PRS) to predict complex multifactorial traits in IVF (in vitro fertilisation) embryos, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and various other characteristics like height, intelligence quotient (IQ), hair and eye colour. Unlike well-known safety risks with human genome editing, (...) there are negligible risks with PGT-P, because there are no man-made genetic modifications that can be transmitted to future generations. Nevertheless, the current efficacy of using PGT-P to select IVF embryos for either increased or decreased probability of developing specific polygenic traits is still far from certain. Hence, the regulatory safeguards proposed here will be based on the assumption that the efficacy of this new technology platform has already been validated. These include: (1) restricting the application of PGT-P only for prevention of clinically relevant polygenic disease traits, (2) securely blocking patients’ access to the raw genomic DNA sequencing data of their IVF embryos, (3) validating diagnosis of polygenic disease traits in the prospective parents/grandparents of IVF embryos, and restricting PGT-P only for preventing specifically diagnosed polygenic disease traits and (4) mandating rigorous and comprehensive genetic counselling for IVF patients considering PGT-P. There is an urgent and dire need to prevent abuse of the PGT-P technique, as well as protect the interests and welfare of patients if its clinical application is to be permitted in the country. (shrink)

Previous studies have suggested that musical training in childhood is beneficial for sociability. However, it remains unclear how age of onset of group music lessons is associated with the late sociability of children from a long-term perspective. This study investigated associations between group music lessons conducted at a music school and children’s levels of sociability by focusing on the age of onset of the lessons. We conducted a survey of 276 children aged 4–5 years (M = 58.5 months) and 6–7 (...) years (M = 82.7 months) who commenced music lessons at ages 1, 2, 4, and 6 years. We found that (1) the empathy scores of children aged 6–7 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when 4-years-old, (2) the communication scores of children aged 4–5 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when older than 1 year, and (3) the empathy and extraversion scores were high in those aged 6–7 years who began lessons in that age range. The results suggest that early onset of music lessons could positively influence children’s sociability; in contrast, after about age 7 years, children who already had high sociability may be more inclined to select group music lessons. By focusing on the impact of regular group music lessons from a very young age on later levels of sociability, these results further elucidate the effects of musical lessons. In sum, participation in group music lessons 2–4 times per month can be effective social training for very young children and foster their later sociability. (shrink)