Holiday Anomalies

正THE week-long National Day holiday at the beginning of October is a firm favorite among Chinese employees.It is a prime time for them to ask for leave to go traveling or visit relatives in other cities.However,if you are about to write an email to your Chinese boss to ask for 20 days of annual leave to travel somewhere in China,then I really have to stop you right     

How electoral vulnerability affects pension politics: Introducing a concept,measure and empirical application

Are electorally vulnerable politicians really less likely to support controversial legislation, such as pension reforms? While the literature on welfare state retrenchment has increasingly pointed to the role of electoral factors in the dynamics of social policy cutbacks, there are few studies that actually measure the magnitude of electoral pressure and its consequent impact on the politics of reform. To this end, the authors have developed a quantitative measure of the electoral vulnerability of politicians and tested its impact on pension reform outcomes using an original dataset comprising 16 Western European countries from 1980 to 2003. In line with expectations, the results show that the impact of electoral vulnerability on reform depends upon the system of interest intermediation. In corporatist systems, electoral vulnerability indeed impedes reform. But in pluralist systems, increased electoral vulnerability is associated with higher levels of reform. This is because unions in corporatist (but not in pluralist) systems can exploit electoral vulnerability in pre‐legislative bargaining, and thus pressure politicians. Consequently, this study has broader implications for the differential responsiveness of democracies to redistributive issues more generally.     

The right of caregivers to access health information of relatives with mental illness

This article reviews the legal, ethical and practical challenges of complying with the Ontario Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) within the context of a Canadian mental health system that is overburdened and under resourced. The advent of deinstitutionalization has placed significantly increased responsibilities on the families of mentally ill individuals. While research evidences that involving family members in the care of their mentally ill relatives improves treatment outcomes, mental health practitioners constantly face the challenge of engaging family caregivers while also complying with privacy laws. The authors propose an Ontario Caregiver Recognition Act (OCRA) to formally recognize family caregivers as informal health information custodians based on the practice of other jurisdictions which incorporate the rights of family members actively engaged in providing care to their mentally ill relatives.     

独立学院转设背景下不确定性规避 对教师工作不安全感的影响 ——一个有调节的中介效应模型

独立学院转设作为一项重大的组织变革，会对教师的切身利益产生重要影响。基于认知评价理 论和资源保存理论，本研究探讨独立学院转设背景下，不确定性规避对教师工作不安全感的影响，并检验感知 转设冲击的中介效应以及人力资本的调节作用。本研究发现：不确定性规避对教师工作不安全感有显著正向影响， 感知转设冲击在不确定性规避和教师工作不安全感之间起部分中介作用，人力资本负向调节不确定性规避和感 知转设冲击之间的关系，人力资本还负向调节感知转设冲击在不确定性规避和教师工作不安全感之间的中介作 用。为保障转设工作的顺利进行，研究建议：学校应就转设与教师进行充分沟通，教师应提升自身人力资本水平， 增强抵御外部环境冲击的能力。