Corporate Governance in Asian Countries: Has Confucianism Anything to Offer?

Although Confucianism is a resilient cultural tradition in Asian societies, its role in their corporate governance systems is ambiguous. Confucian values have been pushed to the periphery because of a preoccupation in these countries to emulate corporate governance systems from the West. This article argues that Confucianism has much to offer in enhancing director conduct and corporate governance standards. As the attention of the global business community turns eastwards, it is opportune to revive interest in Confucianism and to explore ways in which it can be integrated formally into companies' governance systems.     

Infants scan static and dynamic facial expressions differently

Despite being inherently dynamic phenomena, much of our understanding of how infants attend and scan facial expressions is based on static face stimuli. Here we investigate how six-, nine-, and twelve-month infants allocate their visual attention toward dynamic-interactive videos of the six basic emotional expressions, and compare their responses with static images of the same stimuli. We find infants show clear differences in how they attend and scan dynamic and static expressions, looking longer toward the dynamic-face and lower-face regions. Infants across all age groups show differential interest in expressions, and show precise scanning of regions “diagnostic” for emotion recognition. These data also indicate that infants' attention toward dynamic expressions develops over the first year of life, including relative increases in interest and scanning precision toward some negative facial expressions (e.g., anger, fear, and disgust).     

Climate change

At the Copenhagen conference our leaders failed to agree on a course of firm action against climate change. We present three articles on the post-Copenhagen world. In the first of them, Richard Chandler, Jonathan Rougier and Mat Collins describe statistical work that still needs to be done.     

Exploring Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology: A perfect fit for midwifery research

BackgroundHeideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology has been used widely to understand the meaning of lived experiences in health research. For midwifery scholars this approach enables deep understanding of women's and midwives’ lived experiences of specific phenomena. However, for beginning researchers this is not a methodology for the faint hearted. It requires a period of deep immersion to come to terms with at times impenetrable language and perplexing concepts.ObjectivesThis paper aims to assist midwives to untangle and examine some of the choices they face when they first come to terms with an understanding of this methodology and highlights the methodology's capacity to reveal midwifery authenticity and holistic practice.DiscussionThe illumination of a selection of various concepts underpinning hermeneutic phenomenology will inform midwives considering this methodology as suitable framework for exploring contemporary midwifery phenomena.     

Integrating commercial and residential pickup and delivery networks: A case study

This paper presents a strategic analysis of the network design problem faced by pickup and delivery companies operating in metropolitan areas and serving two or more classes of customers. The focus is on a division that treats commercial and residential customers separately, a situation motivated by their respective geographic densities and the size and frequency of their demand. In constructing driver work areas, it is necessary to take into account expected demand, vehicle capacity, time on the road, and the aspect ratio of the individual territories. This leads to a capacitated clustering problem with side constraints that has been the subject of intense research over the last decade.     

DEWEY'S CRITIQUE OF MARXISM

This paper examines the development of John Dewey's critique of Marxism. We trace the development of Dewey's critique from his early political writings and his political encounter with Leon Trotsky to his mature critique. We also examine how Dewey's concerns anticipate ideas expressed in the contemporary discussion of Marxian morality and how this discussion helps clarify Dewey's concerns.