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This article builds on Sacks' Membership Inference-rich Representative (MIR) device in exploring how interviewers and interviewees negotiate professional membership. The data for the research include the transcripts of authentic interviews between 6 interviewers working for a Chinese English-medium media institution and 11 interviewees, the interviewers' notes, and the recruitment results (9 successful ones and 2 unsuccessful ones). The analysis indicates that the Chinese media institution as a community of practice has its membership categories and inference-rich information relevant to the categories. The MIR device was used by the interviewers and the interviewees in their interactions with the successful interviewees orientating to or negotiating the target membership category of Chinese journalists by brokering boundary objects such as the inference-rich information relevant to the target membership category. The notion of membership contextualization cues is proposed by drawing on Gumperz's contextualization cues and Sacks' membership categorization device and applied in the interpretation of the findings.

This study investigates whether and how the CEOs' political spending choice is associated with their earnings management behavior. Using a sample of 8,502 firm-year observations from S&P 500 firms during 1993–2012 over 10 election cycles, we provide empirical evidence that CEOs making political spending mainly through the corporate channel to recipients advised by the firms' own political action committees engage in less earnings management than those making political spending mainly through the private channel to their own selected recipients. This finding suggests that CEOs' political spending choice of the private channel over the corporate channel represents their strong self-interests and is associated with higher agency costs. We further show that the distinction between the two channels is less important when the CEOs' private political spending patterns are aligned with those of their own firms. Our results are robust to techniques alleviating the potential endogeneity issue related to political spending behavior.

Background: China has introduced a large number of national mental health policies over the past decade. However, few studies have touched on what changes the policies brought to the media. Aims: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between stigma reports, classifications of mental disorders (SMI: severe mental illness vs. CMD: common mental disorders) and sources of information (mental health professionals vs. non-mental health professionals) from 2011 to 2020 in China Daily, an established official media of China. Method: This study consists of policy review and media review. The policy review reviewed the media management content in Chinese national plans, policies, and laws on mental health from 2011 to 2020. China Daily news articles reporting mental illness-related topics were included in this study as the media material. After a two-step review, the eligible news articles were coded with a structured codebook. The proportion and frequency of stigma depiction of mental disorders, classifications of mental disorders and source of information were counted by year. Chi-test was undertaken to determine the relationship between stigma reports and different classifications of mental disorders and sources of information. An exploratory analysis was conducted to explore the changes in depiction around time points of policy publications. Results: The number of anti-stigmatizing articles increased significantly from 2011 to 2020. There is a statistical difference in the proportion of stigmatizing codes between articles featuring SMI and CMD (χ2 = 44.56, p < .001) and different sources of information (χ2 = 78.49, p < .001). And the statistical difference remained over the decade. Conclusion: The results of the research indicate that the media may have alleviated the problem of stigma. But the subtle stigmatization still exists, which needs joint efforts of the government and media.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has been active for more than six years since the start of its operations in 2016. The AIIB has developed several dispute settlement mechanisms to deal with disputes in business (with borrowers, the hosting state and debtors), as well as disputes with its employees and third parties. On the one hand, the AIIB has learnt from the experience of other development banks concerning dispute settlement mechanisms. On the other hand, the dispute settlement mechanisms it has adopted have their distinctive characteristics and, about six years in development, they are considered still nascent. This article focuses on these dispute settlement mechanisms and compares them with those of other institutions, particularly the World Bank. The authors recommend that the AIIB should commit greater efforts in building the legal framework, improving the mechanisms, maintaining a balance between institutionalisation and flexibility, and cooperating with other international organisations. (China/GIGA)