Yuan Li Li

Delivering bad news in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) constitutes a profound ethical and emotional challenge. In China, this complexity is intensified by a defensive medical culture and strained physician-family dynamics. This study explores the lived experiences of Chinese neonatologists navigating these high-stakes interactions to uncover the phenomenon’s essential structure. A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted. Using a purposive sampling strategy, 19 neonatologists from a tertiary NICU in Western China were recruited. Data were collected through individual face-to-face, semi-structured in-depth interviews and analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method, with rigorous adherence to the COREQ guidelines to ensure trustworthiness. Five interconnected themes emerged: (1) The defensive paradox—strategic communication in a low-trust arena; (2) “Pushing the child off the cliff”—the burden of proxy decision-making; (3) Embodied moral distress—the somatic and emotional toll; (4) From technical anxiety to phronesis—identity reconstruction through virtue ethics; and (5) Systemic solitude—structural deficits and the training-practice gap. The findings reveal a trajectory from defensive adaptation and the moral burden of proxy agency to embodied suffering, mitigated by indigenous cultural meaning-making (xiuxing), yet constrained by systemic solitude. Delivering bad news in the Chinese context transcends information transmission, representing a form of moral practice that leaves indelible somatic marks on physicians. While practitioners cultivate individual resilience through professional wisdom and spiritual reframing, this “weight” is compounded by institutional voids. Addressing these challenges requires shifting from individual adaptation to multilevel systemic support, including culturally-adapted training, organizational support structures, and clinical ethics consultation services.

This study investigated the effects of culture and collaborative discussion on Chinese and American children’s moral reasoning in reflective essays that they composed about a moral and practical dilemma. In contrast to American children who frequently expressed egocentric concerns, Chinese children exhibited altruistic tendencies and expressed more concern for maintaining in-group harmony, which are the core values advocated in collectivist culture. Collaborative discussion promoted children’s moral reasoning in both cultures, leading to significantly more consideration of the principles of being honest, having empathy for others, keeping promises, honoring friendship, being trustworthy, and not betraying others by tattling.

Despite growing attention to the environment decoupling behaviors of emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) in reconciling the resource dilemmas of responding to institutional pressures and achieving profit maximization, there is limited focus on how different environmental management practices affect EM-MNEs’ international expansion. We argue that symbolic environmental protection of EM-MNEs can effectively balance institutional pressures and economic efficiency, thereby facilitating their international expansion. In contrast, substantive environmental protection introduces risks of sacrificing economic benefits in response to institutional pressures, thus inhibiting international expansion. Furthermore, drawing on recent research on the multi-dimensionality of digitalization in addressing resource dilemmas, we argue that higher digitalization intensity strengthens the positive impact of symbolic environmental protection on international expansion and mitigates the negative impact of substantive environmental protection by reducing both legitimacy and efficiency issues. Conversely, a broader digitalization scope weakens the positive effect of symbolic environmental protection on international expansion and amplifies the negative impact of substantive environmental protection by increasing legitimacy and efficiency challenges. Based on a sample of Chinese listed manufacturing MNEs from 2010 to 2020, we find support for our arguments. This study contributes to the international business (IB) literature at the intersection of EM-MNEs’ legitimation strategies, environmental management practices, and digitalization.

The literature on downward envy mainly explores its consequences at the dyadic level, given the role of envy as a “call to action” that motivates leaders to reduce the gap between themselves and the envied employee. In this paper, we argue that downward envy can be a team-level phenomenon and that its outcomes are due to an out-of-control situation. Specifically, we posit that maximum downward envy triggers ego depletion in leaders, in turn causing them to engage in team-level abusive supervision. We further propose that these relationships are moderated by the leaders’ moral disengagement propensity. Our hypotheses are supported by results from an analysis of 53 leaders and 335 employees. Our findings thus advance the extant literature on downward envy and have important implications for practitioners in terms of managing envy and abusive supervision.

Although a tainted outside director’s social status may serve as a buffer against devaluation owing to an affiliate firm’s corporate financial misconduct, the extent of this buffer effect is unclear. We propose a threshold approach by introducing the expectancy violation perspective, which generates a theoretical tension from the network-embeddedness perspective, to clarify the following question: From which perspective does the buffer effect of social status become more salient? Specifically, we propose an inverted U–shaped relationship between the directors’ social status and the departure of tainted outside directors from host firms. We theorize that when directors’ social status exceeds a certain threshold, the network-embeddedness perspective is more dominant than the expectancy violation perspective. Moreover, a host firm’s external stakeholder attention and board social status moderate the inverted-U effect such that its turning point shifts to the right because such contingencies increase the threshold for the buffer. Using a sample of tainted outside directors penalized for associated firms’ financial misconduct, we find evidence that supports our predictions. Our study helps clarify the boundary between the competing theoretical perspectives of expectancy violation and network embeddedness to explain the phenomenon of tainted director departure.

This chapter examines Zhuangzi, an influential Daoist text written by Zhuang Zhou and named after the Daoist thinker Zhuang Zi. It discusses Zhuangzi’s emphasis on the philosopher’s wisdom regarding political and social management, its concept of personal realization, and its concern with social and political order. It also considers Daoism’s notion of wuwei in relation to wuwo, wudai, wugong, and wuming. Furthermore, it looks at the wholeness, equality, relatedness, and relativity of wanwu, along with the organizational implications of Zhuangzi, and the connection between Daoist thinking and organizational management.

The importance of enterprises significantly improving their innovation performance by working closely with customers throughout the innovation process has been emphasized in recent literature. However, the role of organizational innovation environment in customer creativity and the impact of customer knowledge matching on the innovation environment are not sufficiently explored. Based on the Social cognitive theory and Flow theory, his investigate the factors that influence enterprise innovation performance in the context of customer participation in innovation, as well as how businesses can foster an online innovation environment that fosters customer creativity. The mixed-methods study, which combines qualitative and quantitative research, is used to create the scale item that measures the study’s main variables. Structural equation modeling and bootstrapping estimation was performed on survey data collected via questionnaire from 392 consumers who participated in online service innovation in an online virtual brand community between June 2018 and May 2019. The study obtain the following main results. First, the innovative environment of customer online participation in service innovation fosters customer creativity. Second, two mediation interactions exist: creative self-efficacy and positive emotions, both of which partially mediate the relationship between customer creativity and the innovation environment. Third, while customer knowledge matching influences the intermediary effect of creative self-efficacy on innovation environment and customer creativity, it has no effect on the intermediary effect of positive emotion on innovation environment and customer creativity.

What do events such as scandals, industrial accidents, activist threats, and mass shootings have in common? They can all trigger an audience’s stigma judgment about the organization involved in the event. Despite the prevalence of these stigma-triggering events, management research has provided little conceptual work to characterize the dimensions and processes of organizational event stigma. This article takes the perspective of the evaluating audience to unpack the stigma judgment process, identify critical dimensions for categorizing types of event stigma, and explore the role of the stigmatizers’ aesthetic, emotional, and cognitive reactions as well as their practical considerations in producing what we call “sticky stigmas.” Our event stigma typology provides clarity regarding how stigmas differ based on the types of events and audiences’ reactions and why some event stigmas are stronger and more long-lasting than others. We highlight the role of emotions and aesthetics in stigma formation and the various ethical dilemmas that influence stigma stickiness.

Control of the market microstructure theory of corporate governance perspective on the traditional theory of the firm as a deepening of the study, the use of information economics and game theory tools to the mainstream economic analysis framework for the development, the market for corporate control transactions, configuring and tuning the details of the process accurately describes the shares of companies in the separation of ownership and control of internal control case shareholders, tender offers, takeover bids and other governance mechanisms different from the actual control and operation of, the existence of incomplete information and transaction costs under control conditions to analyze market transactions , from the perspective of market microstructure control to clarify the shareholders of the managers to implement effective control mechanisms, policies and conditions. Share control over the behavior of financial market issues, equity market and environmental factors control the interaction between the control and equity issues in the legal protection and market control policy design issues will be the future theoretical research in this field focus. Corporate governance theory based on corporate control market microstructure focuses on trading, allocating and adjusting process of the corporate control market, applying the information economic approach and game instrument to expand the mainstream economic analysis framework. It accurately describes the factual operation of different corporation control and governance mechanism such as corporation owner's internal control, tender offer, takeover bid and negotiating transfer, deepening the traditional firm theory. Moreover it analyzes the corporate control market transactions on the case of incomplete information and positive transaction cost, examines the effective mechanism, strategies and condition by which the owner control and monitor the management based on corporate control market microstructure perspective. Those are the future research topics in this field that behavior finance, interaction with environments and legislation protect and regulation policy designations

This chapter argues that Confucianism sheds some lights on modern organization leadership from a processual perspective. The cosmological foundation of Confucianism is the dao and its processual nature. Confucian leaders, such as sages and exemplary persons, apply the dao of nature in their art of leadership. Self-cultivation is one of the Confucian core values because people living in a processual organization need to cultivate themselves to be able to deal with changing situations. For a Confucian leader, it is necessary to bring people’s behaviours and thinking onto the proper tracks, and to inspire the people’s moral self-rule. Put another way, the leaders’ art of leading appropriately is to rule between the extremes and handle things according to situational median degree.

It is possible to distinguish between empire, as a form of political order, and imperialism, as a process of aggressive expansion. Mill's liberalism allows for a legitimate empire, in which a civilized state rules a less civilized foreign people paternalistically to prepare them for liberal democratic self-rule. However, it rejects paternalistic imperialism, in the sense of aggression designed to establish such an empire. Apparent textual evidence to the contrary really demonstrates Mill's commitment to three distinct theses: that imperialism may benefit those subject to it, and this can mitigate its evil; that it is easier to justify non-aggressive, empire-creating wars of conquest in response to aggression by barbarian powers; and finally, that civilized states are justified in engaging distant uncivilized peoples non-aggressively, even though the latter's aggressive tendencies mean that such engagement renders empire-justifying wars more likely.

To improve the positioning accuracy of industrial robots and avoid using the coordinates of the end effector, a novel kinematic calibration method based on the distance information is proposed. The kinematic model of an industrial robot is established. The relationship between the moving distance of the end effector and the kinematic parameters is analyzed. Based on the results of the analysis and the kinematic model of the robot, the error model with displacements as the reference is built, which is linearized for the convenience of the following identification. The singular value decomposition is used to eliminate the redundant parameters of the error model. To solve the problem that traditional optimization algorithms are easily affected by data noise in high dimension identification, a novel extended Kalman filter and regularized particle filter hybrid identification method is presented. EKF is used in the preidentification of the linearized error model. With the preidentification results as the initial parameters, RPF is used to identify the kinematic parameters of the linearized error model. Simulations are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which shows that the method can identify the error of the parameters and after compensation the accuracy of the robot is improved.

This chapter argues that Confucianism sheds some lights on modern organization leadership from a processual perspective. The cosmological foundation of Confucianism is the dao and its processual nature. Confucian leaders, such as sages and exemplary persons, apply the dao of nature in their art of leadership. Self-cultivation is one of the Confucian core values because people living in a processual organization need to cultivate themselves to be able to deal with changing situations. For a Confucian leader, it is necessary to bring people’s behaviours and thinking onto the proper tracks, and to inspire the people’s moral self-rule. Put another way, the leaders’ art of leading appropriately is to rule between the extremes and handle things according to situational median degree.