Search Results (1,435)

Chinese megacity communities are not only the primary drivers of economic development but also epicenters of systemic contradictions compounded by overlapping risks. In recent years, NIMBY conflicts have arisen with growing frequency within urban communities, posing a severe threat to urban social sustainability and exposing the significant limitations of the traditional state-led governance model. While nonprofit organizations can compensate for governmental governance deficiencies, their mitigating mechanisms, functional boundaries, and contextual differences remain to be systematically examined. To address this gap, the present study conducts an empirical analysis using data from the Chinese Social Survey (CSS). Methodologically, the study applies OLS regression, mediation–moderation analyses, and heterogeneity tests. The findings reveal that: (1) Participation by nonprofit organizations is associated with significantly lower individual NIMBY opposition intent, thereby playing a mitigating role in alleviating NIMBY risks within Chinese megacity communities. (2) Trust in nonprofit organizations serves as a mediating pathway and acts as a social capital vehicle through which nonprofit organizations alleviate NIMBY risks by mitigating individual opposition. (3) Government information disclosure and institutionalized channels for residents’ participation significantly amplify the negative association between nonprofit participation and individual NIMBY opposition intent, thereby strengthening the mitigating efficacy of nonprofit organizations. (4) The mitigating effects exhibit marked community heterogeneity, indicating that the efficacy of nonprofit participation is highly contingent upon the specific governance resources and structural characteristics of the community. This study improves the theoretical framework of NIMBY risk governance and offers empirical evidence as well as practical guidelines for fostering sustainable urban governance in Chinese megacity communities. Full article

Ecologically fragile and economically underdeveloped mountainous regions face the dual challenge of pursuing catch-up development while maintaining ecological security. Although scientific and technological innovation is widely viewed as a key driver of green transition, county-level evidence remains limited on whether, how, and under what conditions innovation improves green development efficiency (GDE) in such constrained settings. Using a balanced panel of 62 mountainous counties in Hebei Province, China, from 2007 to 2022, this study measures GDE with a super-efficiency SBM model, constructs a composite index of technological innovation with the entropy weight method, and estimates dynamic panel models to examine the direct effect, mediating pathway, and heterogeneity of technological innovation. The results are as follows: (1) Technological innovation significantly promotes GDE, but the effect is mainly released through a lagged and cumulative process rather than fully in the contemporaneous period. This finding suggests that innovation dividends in mountainous counties depend on local technology absorption, organizational adjustment, and complementary infrastructure. (2) Mechanism identification confirms that frontier advancement capability, captured by the Technical Change (TC) index derived from the Malmquist–Luenberger framework, serves as a crucial endogenous mediation channel. Innovation systematically lifts the green efficiency ceiling by accelerating the outward shift in the production possibility frontier toward pollution and carbon reduction, yielding a highly significant indirect effect. (3) The innovation–GDE relationship is conditioned by institutional settings and local absorptive capacity. The effect is strongest in counties included in the 2010 cohort of National Key Ecological Function Zones, whereas in low-efficiency counties the innovation effect is positive but weaker and less persistent, so short-term gains do not automatically accumulate into long-term efficiency advantages. These findings provide county-level empirical evidence for designing time-phased and institutionally differentiated green innovation policies in ecologically constrained, underdeveloped regions. Full article

While Ethnic Studies (ES) emerges from deep traditions of subaltern community struggles for liberatory education, the discipline’s expanding institutionalization within K-12 schools surfaces enduring barriers to community-based education. To meet California’s new ES high school graduation requirement (AB 101), some districts are launching new classes without engaging the visions and knowledges of subaltern communities. In this case, a group of enthusiastic teachers—all new to ES—volunteered to design and launch their district’s class in a predominantly white, politically liberal community in Northern California. During the course’s first year, we gathered for monthly dialogue circles to explore the tensions and possibilities of growing community-grounded ES. Teachers shared misgivings about ES institutionalization, including their role in it, and the barriers to developing “authentic,” community-rooted ES. Yet, they pushed themselves to develop curricula that brought the community “into school” and experiential learning that brought students “into the community.” Initially, teachers centered school in their visions of community and struggled to imagine growing authentic community relationships. As we worked, teachers remembered and re-engaged existing relationships, and—in dialogue with community members—began to explore education as a community praxis. Through critical dialogue about the institutionalization of ES, we traced how infrastructures of schooling and contentious political terrain preserved boundaries in the face of an educational discipline designed to dismantle them and a research project that attempted to blur them. We also surfaced moments of possibility with which to continue imagining—and enacting—the critical, humanizing education that communities deserve. Full article

This article examines when a gender-responsive public procurement obligation becomes institutionally verifiable. It analyzes Brazil’s federal policy reserving jobs for women experiencing domestic and family violence, established by Law No. 14.133/2021 and regulated by Decree No. 11.430/2023 and No. 12.516/2025. The study uses the empirical legal design documented in the underlying doctoral thesis and preserves four non-interchangeable evidentiary layers: an audit of 163 records; a retained corpus of 74 documentary units; a comparative matrix of 67 cases and 335 evidence records; and aggregate official and administrative information. The expanded matrix identified 16 cases with high density across all four dimensions, five with partial intersectoral integration, and 51 that were not verifiable through the documentary proxy. These figures describe the expanded corpus and are not used as a federal compliance denominator. Official aggregate data documented localized implementation involving 20 women; a later administrative update reported 143 women hired across five federative units, without contract-level granularity. The findings indicate that contractual enforceability, intersectoral connectivity, and protected verifiability are necessary institutional conditions—although not sufficient evidence of social impact—for converting the mandate into a monitorable practice. The article distinguishes direct federal evidence, normative diffusion, documentary absence, and non-verifiability without inferring a national effectiveness rate. Full article

Patient motivation is fundamental to engagement, rehabilitation, and recovery within forensic psychiatric hospitals, yet it is often interpreted primarily through the lens of psychopathology and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. This instrumental case study was conducted in a medium-security forensic inpatient unit within a Canadian tertiary mental health hospital and included two patients and four members of the interdisciplinary clinical team. Qualitative findings were interpreted using Self-Determination Theory and situated within contemporary literature on schizophrenia, institutionalization, organizational behaviour, and forensic mental health care. The findings suggest that patient motivation is influenced by the interaction of individual clinical characteristics with organizational, environmental, interpersonal, and institutional conditions. Participants described barriers that may undermine the basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence, contributing to reduced engagement in recovery-oriented behaviours. Rather than supporting a single explanatory mechanism, the findings highlight the importance of understanding motivation as an emergent outcome of both patient factors and the environments in which treatment is delivered. The study introduces a decision-support framework that prioritizes identified barriers according to the degree of organizational control and their systemic reach, together with an integrative conceptual model that synthesizes qualitative findings with contemporary psychiatric and interdisciplinary theory. The findings suggest that patient motivation should be understood not only as a function of individual psychopathology but also as an outcome shaped by the environments and organizational systems in which care is delivered. By identifying modifiable organizational and environmental determinants of motivation, the proposed framework shifts the focus of intervention beyond patient-level approaches toward system-level strategies—including organizational practice, environmental design, and institutional policy—that may better support engagement in recovery-oriented forensic mental health care. Full article

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into spatial planning and governance, a central challenge is translating AI-enabled technical capabilities into institutionally usable spatial decision-making capacity. Taking territorial spatial governance (TSG) in China as a context-specific governance setting, this study combines bibliometric analysis and structured review to examine its knowledge evolution, technical pathways, and spatial decision-making constraints. The results show that: (1) research has progressively shifted from digital support and spatial monitoring toward intelligent analysis and governance-oriented applications; (2) four recurrent pathways of AI embedding are synthesized from the literature—sensing and identification, analytical simulation, decision support, and platform coordination; (3) the translation of these technical capabilities into spatial decision-making capacity is constrained by heterogeneous data foundations, limited model interpretability and transferability, institutional misalignment, and uneven organizational implementation; and (4) spatial decision-making capacity emerges through the interaction of technical pathways and constraint mechanisms under the multi-scale, differentiated, and rule-bound spatial logic of TSG. These findings provide an analytical basis for understanding how AI-enabled technical capabilities are translated from technical feasibility into governance usability under institutionally and spatially specific conditions. Full article

Two debates in the analytic philosophy of literature have run in parallel: one asks how literary criticism can be rational when critical reasons neither entail nor inductively support the readings they back (Isenberg, Sibley); the other asks whether literature has cognitive value, and is stalled on a dilemma, since extractable truths are banal and non-trivial ones unevidenced (Stolnitz, Lamarque and Olsen, Currie). This paper argues that Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-seeing dissolve both problems jointly, and that each dissolution is incomplete without the other. Criticism, I argue, is not proto-theory but the production of perspicuous representations: arrangements of what already lies open to view, assembled reminders whose characteristic success is the dawning of an aspect rather than assent to a conclusion. Correspondingly, the literature’s cognitive yield is aspectual rather than propositional: a transformation of perception and an enriched responsiveness to situations, motives, and words, in which meaning is not extracted from the text but lived in the reader’s altered practice. Criticism is the institutionalized practice by which such dawning is occasioned, disciplined, and transmitted (the care of a shared sensibility), and the aspectual character of literary understanding explains why critical reasoning must take the reminder-assembling form it does. The two debates are two descriptions of one practice, sustained by public criteria within forms of life. The account is developed through the critical history of Dickinson’s “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun” and defended against the objections of quietism, interpretive relativism, and empirical skepticism. Full article

This study examines the perceived competitiveness of information technology companies in Kazakhstan from a governance and innovation-ecosystem perspective. In emerging digital economies, firm competitiveness depends not only on technological capabilities, but also on the state’s ability to coordinate fragmented actors, support human capital development, improve innovation infrastructure, and create functional mechanisms for cooperation between business, government, universities, and research institutions. Using a mixed-methods design, the study combines survey data from 200 respondents across all 20 regions of Kazakhstan with 26 semi-structured expert interviews. All constructs are perception-based: the study assesses how sectoral stakeholders evaluate the determinants of competitiveness and does not measure firm performance. The results show that stakeholders perceive IT-company competitiveness as a systemic outcome shaped by human capital, technological competencies, innovation infrastructure, government support, business–science interaction, and clusterization. Human capital, innovation infrastructure, technological competencies, and clusterization-related mechanisms received the strongest evaluations. Correlation analysis further indicates that competitiveness factors are positively interconnected, supporting an ecosystem-based interpretation rather than a firm-centered explanation. The findings also reveal persistent constraints, including talent shortages, weak investment depth, regulatory instability, technological dependence, and insufficient coordination among ecosystem actors. The study contributes to administrative and strategic management research by showing that stakeholders regard clusterization as a governance mechanism for strengthening state capacity, public–private–academic coordination, and digital-sector development in an institutionally uneven emerging economy. Full article

Sustainable urban infrastructure increasingly relies on blockchain-secured energy digital twins to improve energy-data verification, transparency, traceability, and trust across construction, operation, certification, and compliance. Yet the prevailing literature still treats these systems primarily as descriptive mirrors of physical infrastructure, emphasizing their ability to capture, verify, and protect data on energy production, consumption, storage, and exchange. Verified records can underpin institutional outcomes such as certification and compliance—but this framing ignores a deeper change: blockchain-secured digital twins may help automate the constitution of those outcomes, rather than only representing infrastructure performance. This conceptual study develops the Automated Constitution Model (ACM), which explains the conditions under which blockchain-secured energy digital-twin records transition from epistemic verification to institutionally recognized outcomes and how accountability is redistributed across the socio-technical actors involved in that transition. The model defines seven interconnected layers: physical infrastructure, measurement, digital representation, cryptographic attestation, rule interpretation and execution, institutional outcome, and legitimacy/accountability. Lower layers are epistemic—they measure, represent, and validate physical energy events. The shift occurs when encoded rule systems, such as smart contracts, certification logic, compliance frameworks, and market-governance protocols, interpret cryptographically attested records to generate recognized institutional outputs such as renewable energy certificates, settlement claims, compliance statuses, payment rights, and ownership records, rendering the higher layers ontological and normative. This study contributes to blockchain governance, digital twins, and sustainable infrastructure research by theorizing blockchain-secured digital twins as systems of automated institutional constitution rather than mere information-integrity tools. It also surfaces a growing accountability gap: as institutional outcomes increasingly rely on encoded rules, platform designers, data modelers, authors of smart contracts, certifiers, and regulators may share accountability with physical actors. Full article

Background/Objectives: In institutionalized older adults, we examined the concordance between self-reported xerostomia and chairside salivary dysfunction and explored whether a smaller subset of Xerostomia Inventory items could retain comparable screening performance. Methods: This cross-sectional study included institutionalized older adults. The 11-item Xerostomia Inventory was compared with a six-marker chairside whole-saliva panel, with all variables scaled 0 (normal) to 1 (pathological). We measured how closely symptoms tracked each objective marker, how well the questionnaire identified hyposalivation, and whether fewer questions could be comparable with the full 11-item inventory. Results: The study included 90 participants, with a mean age of 79.5 years; 55.6% were women. Symptoms tracked every marker in the expected direction (correlation τ-b 0.32 to 0.62). The questionnaire identified objective hyposalivation with an area under the ROC curve of 0.87 (95% CI 0.78–0.96) and substantial chance-corrected agreement (Cohen’s κ 0.69, 95% CI 0.51–0.87). A five-item short form reproduced the objective findings as well as the full questionnaire did (cross-validated R² 0.56 ± 0.03 versus 0.56). Conclusions: In this high-prevalence institutional cohort, self-reported symptoms agreed with graded salivary function more closely than the older discordance literature would suggest, though still within the range of recent studies rather than beyond it. A five-item subset, chosen for its alignment with the objective salivary axis rather than for internal consistency, recovered as much as the full inventory, which points to a short, function-oriented score as a plausible first-stage screen. We would treat this short form as a candidate first-stage screening approach that requires external validation, rather than as a replacement for objective salivary assessment or as a validated replacement for the Xerostomia Inventory. Full article

Accrual accounting reform can be formally adopted before the internal audit routines needed to assure it are operationally embedded. This exploratory diagnostic study examines perceived implementation risk among 95 internal audit professionals working in Saudi governmental entities. A content audit of an existing questionnaire showed that its original accrual-basis accounting application (ABAA), senior management support (SMS), and internal audit effectiveness (IAE) blocks combined conceptually adjacent benefit, support, resource, and outcome statements. The analysis therefore uses theory-guided, content-separated diagnostic domains and an item-level timeliness model rather than treating the original blocks as discriminant latent constructs or testing mediation. Within-respondent contrasts were assessed using paired t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank checks. Because timely completion is a five-category ordinal outcome, ordinal regression is the scale-respecting approach. The full five-predictor ordered-logit model was retained as a theory-complete diagnostic because E4 explicitly includes staffing, but its global proportional-odds restriction was rejected due to staffing. Accordingly, substantive ordinal inference and model-implied probabilities are based on the assumption-compatible reduced model excluding staffing, while the full model is reported transparently as a diagnostic sensitivity specification. Formal reform orientation exceeded applied reform capacity by 0.437 points (p < 0.001; dz = 0.441); visible governance and monitoring exceeded operational audit infrastructure by 0.674 points (p < 0.001; dz = 0.830); and perceived staffing sufficiency exceeded timely task completion by 0.800 points (p < 0.001; dz = 0.615). In the assumption-compatible reduced ordered-logit model, annual planning (b = 0.581, p = 0.016) and the accrual-aligned internal audit guide (b = 1.570, p < 0.001) were positively associated with timeliness; the corresponding full-model estimates were nearly identical. The OLS-HC3 robustness model accounted for 61.2% of respondent-level variation, although same-source response tendencies may contribute to this fit. The observed pattern is compatible with uneven layered institutionalization and a risk of decoupling between visible or formal elements and operational routines; it does not establish temporal sequencing, sector-wide prevalence, intentional symbolic compliance, or causal effects. Conclusions are bound by the cross-sectional, same-source design and the post hoc diagnostic use of an existing instrument that requires prospective validation. Full article

Background/Objectives: To investigate the prevalence of the Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR) Syndrome among older adults in long-term care facilities and its associated risk factors. Methods: From January to December 2024, older adults were recruited from five long-term care facilities in Southwest China via convenience sampling. All participants underwent a series of standardized assessments, including a self-designed demographic questionnaire, the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15), the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, the Fried frailty phenotype scale, sarcopenia assessment based on the SARC-F sarcopenia screening scale, the Basic Activities of Daily Living (BADL) scale, the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL, Lawton) scale, and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). The 4 m walk test was performed to measure participants’ gait speed. This cross-sectional study aimed to explore the prevalence of MCR syndrome and its associated influencing factors among institutionalized older adults. Results: The overall MCR prevalence was 8.6%. Univariate tests detected intergroup differences in BMI, depressive symptoms, hearing loss, multimorbidity, mobility impairment, frailty and several chronic diseases (all p < 0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis further demonstrated that, after adjustment for confounders, higher depressive symptom scores (OR = 1.169, 95% CI: 1.079–1.265, p < 0.001), mild mobility impairment (OR = 4.725, 95% CI: 1.340–16.663, p = 0.016), moderate mobility impairment (OR = 3.921, 95% CI: 1.146–13.420, p = 0.029), and more than three chronic comorbidities were independent risk factors for MCR among institutional older adults residing in long-term care facilities (OR = 2.789, 95% CI: 1.465–5.309, p = 0.002). Conclusions: Depressive symptoms, mild-to-moderate mobility impairment and multimorbidity were independent correlates of MCR among institutional older adults. Distinct risk-factor patterns existed for SG and SCCs, highlighting the separable nature of motor and subjective-cognitive dimensions. Integrated screening for emotional, physical and chronic disease risk and personalized activity interventions are warranted for long-term care residents. Full article

Folklore narratives often function as cultural mechanisms through which societies construct memories of origin, authority, and identity. This article examines how hierogamy narratives in Indonesian folklore transform sacred ancestry into genealogical legitimacy and social authority. Employing a qualitative comparative folklore analysis with a genealogical reading approach, this study examines seven Indonesian folktales: Jaka Tarub, Rajapala, Pego dan Putri Petong, Bujang Bekurung, Putri Tujuh (Ternate), Sidang Belawan, and Putri Tujuh (Maluku). The analysis focuses on three dimensions: the transformation of social status following sacred unions, the transmission of legitimacy through genealogical relationships, and the narrative trials that validate authority. The findings demonstrate that hierogamy functions as a cultural mechanism through which celestial being origins are converted into political, social, and customary legitimacy. Sacred marriages establish extraordinary ancestry, genealogies preserve and transmit symbolic authority, and trials confirm the legitimacy of protagonists and their descendants. The study also reveals a gendered paradox: celestial women provide the foundation of sacred legitimacy, yet authority is frequently institutionalized through male-centered genealogical systems. By positioning hierogamy as a form of genealogical legitimation, this article contributes to folklore and genealogy studies by demonstrating how narratives construct, preserve, and negotiate authority across generations. Full article

Digital governance has increasingly emerged as a critical institutional mechanism for strengthening public administration, enhancing accountability, improving service delivery, and advancing inclusive development across Africa. Governments across the continent have expanded investments in e-governance systems, digital public infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled administrative systems, interoperable service platforms, and data-driven governance reforms as part of broader modernization and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agendas. Despite these developments, digital governance outcomes remain uneven and are frequently constrained by fragmented governance architectures, weak institutional coordination, administrative capacity deficits, regulatory limitations, and persistent socio-economic inequalities. To address these challenges, this study conducts a qualitative Systematic Literature Review (SLR) guided by PRISMA 2020 reporting standards to examine how digital technologies interact with governance systems, institutional structures, administrative capability, and socio-technical inequalities across African public sectors. The review synthesized 42 included studies published between 2015 and 2025 using structured Boolean search strategies, predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, abductive thematic synthesis, and framework-oriented analytical procedures. The findings identify three interconnected governance constraints shaping digital transformation outcomes across African public sectors: fragmented and centralized governance arrangements; institutional and administrative capability deficits; and persistent digital inequalities and exclusionary governance systems. Although digital governance reforms demonstrate important potential for improving transparency, interoperability, citizen participation, financial inclusion, and administrative efficiency, sustainable transformation outcomes depend heavily on institutional coordination, adaptive governance systems, digital inclusion, regulatory effectiveness, and accountable AI governance arrangements. Building on the synthesized evidence, the study develops a decentralized AI-enabled digital public governance framework linking decentralization, interoperability, institutional coordination, digital inclusion, adaptive governance, and ethical AI governance to sustainable public-sector transformation outcomes. The study contributes theoretically by reconceptualizing digital governance as an institutionally embedded governance transformation process rather than merely a technological modernization agenda. The findings further contribute to sustainability debates by demonstrating how inclusive and decentralized digital governance systems can strengthen institutional resilience, public-sector innovation, and sustainable development outcomes across diverse African governance contexts. Full article

Bitcoin is often narrated through price cycles, yet major dated events affect different layers of the ecosystem. This study analyzes 21 Bitcoin-related events between 2012 and 2024 using a first-public-information dating rule, a mechanism-based event taxonomy, and daily Coin Metrics data. Price-defined milestones are retained as historical markers but excluded from mechanism-level comparisons. Baseline cumulative abnormal log returns are estimated with a constant-mean model over days −120 to −21 and reported for [−1,+1], [−3,+3], and [−7,+7] windows. The analysis adds standardized CARs, Benjamini–Hochberg multiplicity checks, date-sensitivity tests, estimation-window sensitivity, a market model using a capitalization-weighted Bitcoin-excluded crypto proxy, a crypto-plus-macro model using S&P 500 and broad U.S. dollar-index returns, and non-price ecosystem indicators. In the clean mechanism sample, trust shocks have the most negative median raw CARs (−16.8, −22.3, and −21.6 log-return percentage points across the three windows); exact trust-versus-other tests are significant for CAR3 and CAR7 (p = 0.002) but not for CAR15 (p = 0.082). Standardized tests show the same short-window pattern (p = 0.009 and p = 0.006). No individual event-level empirical p-value survives a 5% Benjamini–Hochberg correction, and market-model controls attenuate several effects, so the findings are interpreted descriptively rather than causally. On-chain indicators show that trust shocks coincide with elevated exchange flows and spot volume, while active-address and hash-rate measures do not indicate protocol-layer collapse. The study contributes a transparent framework that separates market reaction, service-layer stress, protocol resilience, and institutional significance. Full article