Living in the age of emotional rationality: Wendell Bell, social media and the challenges of value change

When the change process accelerates, the meaning of the logic of cause and effect in living through this blurring reality clearly diminishes. We have to tell the story of our reality and future both to ourselves and to society with new concepts, words and metaphors. While the importance of instant experience and transience grows, our in-depth understanding of the logic of time gradually crumbles away. The fervency of action widens the limits of reality in a fundamental way, even though our personal human capacity to receive and handle information and experience emotions and events has not changed in the one million years of human history.The present is swelling over the past and the future. The social media transforms into one big global amplifier through which emotional experience is transmitted and strengthened. The asset of collective experiences is that they are universal, they are private and felt on an individual level, and yet they can simultaneously be shared by the others. However, one might also say that even though the growth of information produces more and more different value contents for us to choose from, this freedom of choice is still rather spurious.With the traditional norms, models of action, habits and attitudes we can no longer cope in this totally new reality. We live in an age of controversies which emphasizes emotions with public intimacy and privacy with a realtime audience. We are enchanted by creativity and innovativeness and our decisions have to be made quickly, efficiently and in a short-term basis. We cannot freely consider our values, but in order to cope, we have to try to behave in a way which is the most target-oriented, and at the same time, the tools and methods to cope in this rapidly changing reality are still scarce. Therefore we have to weigh the efficiency and suitability of the means in relation to the objective also in such situations where we cannot make proper value assessments. Emotional universality can become, or at least with the help of skilled media PR professionals, it can be used as a means to commercialize our emotions, or it can help us in the process of building universal values.     

不同价格背景下肉鸡产业链主体利益优化研究

[目的]为全面分析肉鸡产业链各主体利益分配情况。[方法]文章以肉鸡主产区山东、河南、河北等省为例,对肉鸡出栏价格处于不同变化趋势下的产业链环节主体成本收益情况进行对比分析,并利用Shapley值测算产业链各主体最佳利益分配值。[结果](1)价格高峰与低谷期肉鸡产业链各环节主体利益分配格局差别较大,研究农产品产业链利益分配时需将农产品价格周期纳入研究范围。(2)各主体合作加强合作可实现利益分配的合理化及增加链条总收益。价格低谷期产业链环节主体种鸡场、养殖户、屠宰加工企业、零售商利益分配值与最佳利益分配比例为10.49:(-0.45):44.42:45.54调整为13.96:18.51:31.33:36.20,合作后肉鸡产业链增值比合作前高1.68元/只。现实利益分配情况与夏普利值测算的最佳分配方案存在一定差距。(3)一体化模式、公司+农户模式下肉鸡产业链各环节由于合同或契约的存在,各主体之间在生产管理、要素供应等方面协作更加紧密,抗市场风险能力相对较强,利益分配格局相对合理。[结论]提出加强肉鸡产业链各环节主体间相互合作、建立公司与农户更加紧密的利益联结机制、做强做大肉鸡行业协会促进肉鸡产业健康发展等建议。     

Fairness in business: Does it matter,and what does it mean?

Fairness is a value that is touted and typically reinforced from childhood onward. Its association is universally positive. But does fairness have a place in business? Does it extend to the realm in which profit is emphasized? This Business Law & Ethics Corner delves into the matter and provides guidance for decision makers regarding fairness and its implications for business.     

Nested multiple imputation of NMES via partially incompatible MCMC

The multiple imputation of the National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES) involved the use of two new techniques, both having potentially broad applicability. The first is to use distributionally incompatible MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo), but to apply it only partially, to impute the missing values that destroy a monotone pattern, thereby limiting the extent of incompatibility. The second technique is to split the missing data into two parts, one that is much more computationally expensive to impute than the other, and create several imputations of the second part for each of the first part, thereby creating nested multiple imputations with their increased inferential efficiency.     

Employers’ Perspectives on the Canadian National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace

Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in Canada, with costs estimated at 51 billion dollars annually in addition to significant social costs. The Canadian National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (the Standard), recently released by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, aims to promote psychological health and safety in Canadian workplaces. The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of Canadian employers on the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. Ten employers from large, medium, and small workplaces participated in qualitative semi-structured interviews. Interviews were transcribed and thematic analysis was used to identify themes. Employers are concerned with workplace mental health and see value in the Standard, but are relatively uninformed about it. Employers identified leadership as a critical ingredient for effective Standard implementation, and believed that benefits of the Standard can be far reaching. Roger’s (2003) Diffusion of Innovations model is applied to conceptualize the uptake of this important social change. Employers’ perspectives and foundational knowledge about the Standard provides a starting point for collaborations between human resource professionals, workplace consultants, and workplace leaders to move the implementation of the Standard forward and create psychologically healthy work environments.     

Political Views and Corporate Decision Making: The Case of Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and political beliefs in the United States. By analyzing the 2004 presidential election results of communities in which corporate headquarters are located, we establish a correlation between the political beliefs of corporate stakeholders and the CSR ratings of their firms. Companies with a high CSR rating tend to be located in Democratic, or “blue” states and counties, while companies with a low CSR rating tend to be located in Republican, or “red” states and counties.     

International competition and exchange rate shocks: a cross-country industry analysis of stock returns

This article systematically examines the importance of exchangerate movements and industry competition for stock returns. Commonshocks to industries across countries are more important thancompetitive shocks due to changes in exchange rates. Weeklyexchange rate shocks explain almost nothing of the relativeperformance of industries. Using returns measured over longerhorizons, the importance of exchange rate shocks increases slightlyand the importance of industry common shocks increases moresubstantially. Both industry and exchange rate shocks are moreimportant for industries that produce internationally tradedgoods, but the importance of these shocks is economically smallfor these industries as well.     

The First Crisis of the Twenty-First Century-摘自《不确定的世界》第一章

On the evening of January 10, 1995, I stood on the Great Seal woven into the carpet of the Oval Office and swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States as Secretary of the Treasury. Confirmed earlier that day, I have been waiting all afternoon for the official document that would allow me to take the oath of office. Once the papers