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Examines the challenges & responses of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak. The devastating impact of SARS on the Chinese economy is recounted, as well as the impact on neighboring countries, & the probability of only temporary damage to the PRC's economy is assessed. The response by the government, particularly concerning the media, revealed inefficiency. The need for a stronger, more effective health care system in the PRC & international coordination to stem public health outbreaks is advocated. L. Collins Leigh

Examines the challenges & responses of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak. The devastating impact of SARS on the Chinese economy is recounted, as well as the impact on neighboring countries, & the probability of only temporary damage to the PRC's economy is assessed. The response by the government, particularly concerning the media, revealed inefficiency. The need for a stronger, more effective health care system in the PRC & international coordination to stem public health outbreaks is advocated. L. Collins Leigh

We join the debate on trade interdependence and conflict with a reexamination of Barbieri's (1996) intriguing empirical results showing that under certain circumstances, trade interdependence causes conflict. We argue that these findings resulted from a specification that was missing a variable. We return to Barbieri's models and introduce two independent power measures for countries within each dyad. When a correctly specified trade-conflict regression model incorporating the new power variables is performed, the constraining effect of interdependence becomes evident, and the results obtained are the reverse of Barbieri's. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2007.]

AbstractThe existing scholarship has developed six main explanations to account for the success of the Chinese Revolution, which has been anomalous for major paradigms derived from cross-national comparisons. Methodologically, we use a social geographical approach to test these existing explanations systematically by constructing and analyzing a unique dataset of Communist growth in 93 counties in the three most contested provinces during its most pivotal period of ascendence. Theoretically, we advance and test an alternative perspective, based on the groundwork of Tocqueville and Fei Xiaotong, that integrates the state-centric theory, elite theory, and cultural analysis. Our perspective emphasizes the interplay between state centralization and local elite structure, which leads to intensified state extraction and local elite fracturing, thus creating favorable conditions for revolution. The quantitative analysis strongly supports the importance of the Japanese invasion but provides limited support for many other conventional explanations. The analysis largely confirms the Tocqueville-Fei perspective on state centralization, elite fracturing, cultural change, and revolution. The findings are buttressed by a detailed case study of Lianshui County. The study unveils a common structural challenge that a modernizing state faces in an agrarian status society, to recreate its political legitimacy while disrupting local elite structure. It also sheds historical light on the evolution of state-society relationship through the Chinese Revolution.

AbstractGiven the significant costs of abusive supervision and the broad implications of an increasingly aging workforce, scholars have called for examining the role of employee age in the abusive supervision literature. In response to this call, this study introduced a moderated mediation model of age, abusive supervision, cognitive reappraisal, and workplace deviance based on socioemotional selectivity theory. We tested this model with a sample of 614 working adults. Results suggest that employee age significantly moderated the effect of abusive supervision on cognitive reappraisal such that abusive supervision was negatively related to cognitive reappraisal for younger workers, but not for older workers. Cognitive reappraisal was negatively related to workplace (i.e., interpersonal and organizational) deviance. Furthermore, there was a significant moderated mediation effect where the indirect relationship between abusive supervision and workplace deviance via cognitive reappraisal was significant for younger workers, but not for older workers. Our findings suggest that older workers' emotional competencies (e.g., use of cognitive reappraisal) may account for age-related advantages in coping with abusive supervision. Theoretical and implications were discussed.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine how individual differences influence employees' attitude toward organizational change. Specifically, the present study examined how and why proactive personality, dispositional resistance to change, and change self-efficacy influence employees' perceived fairness about the organizational change.Design/methodology/approach– Structural equation modeling was utilized to analyze the survey data obtained from a sample of 140 food service employees after some organizational changes in leadership, menu offerings, and facilities.Findings– The results revealed support for two micromediational chains predicting change fairness: first, change self-efficacy leads to less uncertainty and second, dispositional resistance to change leads to less communication regarding change resulting in employees perceiving they have fewer opportunities to voice concerns about the changes.Research limitations/implications– The cross-sectional design prevents causal inferences and the generalizability of the present findings beyond similar samples experiencing similar changes is unknown. However, the predictions were based on theories that apply to all employees regardless of the changes or the employees' occupations or workplace.Social implications– Employees with particular personality traits are more receptive to change, suggesting that organizations should consider the impact of individual differences when facing large-scale change. To ensure the success of organizational change, organizations should communicate with employees and encourage employee input before implementing change which in turn improves the chances that employees will have favorable reactions to the change.Originality/value– This is the first study to examine how and why individual difference variables influence employees' perceptions about organizational change fairness.

We set out to understand how role-making works and what roles employees and leaders play in this process. Employees often make changes to their work roles, such as by negotiating their job responsibilities and seeking challenging tasks. In this study, we suggest that role-making behaviours influence and are influenced by the dyadic relationship between leaders and employees, otherwise known as leader–member exchange (LMX). We collected three waves of survey data from a sample of Chinese employees who were recent college graduates ( n = 203). The results from cross-lagged panel analyses showed that (1) LMX and job-change negotiation were reciprocally related to each other and (2) initial LMX was associated with increased challenge-seeking behaviours, although these behaviours did not lead to greater LMX later on. In addition, we found evidence that when employees experienced a high level of emotional ambivalence (a conflicting, mixed and complex emotional state), the direct and reciprocal relationships between LMX and role-making behaviours were weakened. Our findings advance the understanding of the development of leader–employee relationships in the workplace and have implications for strengthening employee perceptions of high-quality relationships with their leaders by making changes to their workplace roles.