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Interpersonal relationships are a crucial concept in the field of organizational behavior, and they have accumulated a rich body of research to date. However, relationship theory encompasses various perspectives, and these divergent viewpoints have led to fragmented discussions, making it challenging to integrate and impeding the progress of research. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on relationships in the context of the Chinese workplace, aiming to understand the current state of research achievements and challenges. Firstly, this paper reviews the publication trends of relationship studies in TSSCI journals within the fields of industrial psychology and management. Next, it synthesizes several significant Western relationship theories and elucidates their research outcomes in the context of the Chinese workplace. Thirdly, this paper examines relationship theories unique to Chinese culture and related research. Fourthly, it attempts to propose two organizing frameworks based on content and process perspectives to summarize current theories. Finally, based on these organizing frameworks, the paper discusses future research directions in the field of relationship studies. Through this comprehensive review and synthesis, this paper aspires to provide a coherent overview of relationship research in the Chinese workplace, serving as a valuable reference for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current focus on fairness and justice issues within organizations predominantly focuses on frontline employees, with only a limited number of studies delving into the perceptions of fairness among managerial staff. However, understanding how supervisors react to unfair treatment by their subordinates, particularly in terms of forgiveness and retaliation, is crucial in shaping leadership styles. This paper provides a concise review of organizational justice perspectives and research, establishes the conceptual implications of supervisor perceptions of unfair treatment by subordinates, and explores the repercussions of supervisor forgiveness and retaliation. Additionally, it discusses the potential impact of these actions on group climate and individual/group effectiveness while considering moderating variables such as emotional connections between supervisors and the organization or subordinates. The paper proposes a conceptual framework outlining the potential consequences when supervisors experience unfair treatment from subordinates and choose forgiveness or retaliation. The paper concludes by presenting nine research propositions to guide future studies and suggests potential avenues for further research and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenced by family characteristics and pan-familism in Chinese organizations, Chinese leaders tend to treat their subordinates as family members and give them care, opportunities, and believe that taking care of subordinates is a duty-bound obligation. According to the cultural tradition of Chinese relations, scholars interpret the possible impact of the relationship between leaders and subordinates in Chinese business organizations from the perspective of “the interactive dual model of the benefactor and the beneficiary.” They called it “benevolent leadership,” which means that the leader cares for the personal well-being of subordinates individually, comprehensively, and for a long time. Benevolent leadership is rooted in paternalistic leadership theory. There have been many review articles or metaanalysis papers on paternalistic leadership. It is not difficult to see the importance and significance of benevolent leadership. However, there has yet to be a paper that specifically and systematically reviews benevolent leadership and explores its particularity and effectiveness. Given this, this article attempts to re-examine the past achievements, current situation, and future directions of benevolent leadership theory with a longitudinal investigation and a thematic analysis. To sum up, this article would review and discuss the research results of benevolent leadership in the order of the following key points. First, it would review the concept and cultural roots of benevolent leadership. Second, it would present the theoretical development, definition, and dimension evolution of benevolence. Third, it would analyze benevolent leadership theory from different perspectives. Fourth, it would clarify and compare the similarities and differences of benevolent leadership with similar leadership theories. Fifth, it would examine the relevant research results of benevolent leadership in the context of the triad model of paternalistic leadership, including the direct effects on subordinate attitudes and behaviors, as well as the mediating and moderating variables. Finally, after systematically reviewing the research on benevolent leadership, this paper would propose future research prospects to clarify unresolved issues further and comprehensively present the validity and importance of benevolent leadership theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employee silence, the withholding of input about work-related matters, has been frequently observed in organizations, and it may be detrimental to organizational performance and employees’ well-being. Hence, employee silence has become an important topic in recent years and accumulated massive research to examine its antecedents and consequences. However, some issues still need to be addressed, including unclear definition of the construct and lack of a systematic integration of the results. Therefore, this paper will re-clarify the concept of employee silence, integrate the results of past research, and provide suggestions for future research. We first clarify the development of the employee silence construct, the relationship between silence motives and silence behavior, the similarities and differences between silence and voice, and the important characteristics of employee silence. Secondly, we sort out the current research on employee silence and put forward the culture issue, explaining the particularity of employee silence in Chinese culture in order to provide further inspiration for future research on employee silence in Taiwan. Finally, we also propose recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friendship alienation is a common dilemma experienced by many Chinese people in life. It especially has negative impacts on the mental health of the alienated party, which cannot be ignored. The role of “yuanfen” ( 緣分 ) in adapting to relationship dilemmas has already been put forward and yuanfen has recently been subdivided into beliefs in “yuan” (緣) and “fen” (分). However, yuan and fen beliefs were for the most part hypothesized in the past to have respective effects on psychological adaptation. This paper first proposes the hypothesis that yuan and fen belief can work together (interact) to buffer the negative effects of friendship alienation on mental health. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the roles of the yuan and fen beliefs following friendship alienation, including the effect of “friendship alienation” on “mental health” and the moderating role of yuan and fen beliefs. In this study, adults aged 18 and above were adopted as subjects. Data was collected through online questionnaires. Participants were requested to fill out assessment scales measuring friendship alienation experiences, their yuan and fen beliefs, sense of loneliness, satisfaction with life, subjective happiness, etc. The results show that compared with those without experiences of friendship alienation, people who had experienced estrangement from their friends within two years indeed showed poorer mental health. The research results with greater significance show that 1) If the yuan and fen beliefs operate simultaneously, they play a buffering role on the negative impacts of alienation experience on mental health. If they both operate independently however, they do not have a buffering effect on the negative impacts of the alienation experience on mental health; and 2) It is worth noting that in situations where belief in yuan is low, and the belief in fen is higher, the more likely an experience of alienation would jeopardize subjective happiness and satisfaction with life. Overall, the joint operation of the beliefs in yuan and fen may play a buffering role in the negative effects of friendship alienation. Nevertheless, it is also worth noting that under specific circumstances, yuan and fen do not always have positive effects on negative relationships as mentioned in the preceding literature. Finally, the research results were targeted for further discussion. The research limitations and directions were also indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated why and how college students terminate academic procrastination and materialize the idea of terminating procrastination. Three separate studies were conducted. The first research is a pilot study that adopted the questionnaire survey approach to collect data from 123 participants who have enrolled in college degree programs. Results show that almost all of the respondents have the experience of terminating academic procrastination. The reasons include “There is not much time left,” “I could not be in such a slump,” “Continued procrastination would have led to unfavorable results in the future,” “The expectations of significant others regarding my performance” and “Reflections on past procrastination experiences.” The second research took a qualitative approach. It used the possible reasons for terminating procrastination from the first research to conduct focus interviews with 16 individuals. After comparing the procrastination phase and the termination of procrastination phase, it is demonstrated that: at the termination of the procrastination phase, interviewees showed more self-awareness, including introspection of their motivations to take action and becoming concerned about significant others’ opinion of themselves. In terms of their perspective on time, the interviewees shifted away from present hedonism to future time perspective. With regard to their state of mind, they shifted away from fixed mindset to growth mindset. Also, interviewees indicated that they were able to inhibit distractions, and concepts such as hard work would lead to fruitful ends or to strive as much as one is able could help them transform notions of terminating procrastination into real action. In the third research, a quasi- -experiment was conducted, targeting 627 participants who have enrolled in college degree programs. They were assigned short essay readings. Results show that the sense of the public self-consciousness, present hedonism, and fixed mindset cannot terminate procrastination, but the sense of private self-consciousness, future time perspective, and growth mindset can terminate procrastination. When an individual’s sense of private self-consciousness, future time perspective, and growth mindset increases, the likelihood to inhibit distraction, and concepts such as hard work would lead to fruitful ends or maximum dedication tend to take shape, leading to the likelihood of the individual to take real action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Health Organization regards betel quid (BQ) as a human carcinogen. The BQ chewers may develop dependence symptoms. Although chewing BQ is common in many Asian countries, BQ is still a “populous orphan” in the field of addictive substance. The current review paper systematically reviews the cognitive neuroscientific studies on BQ chewers to understand the chewing effect on cognitive functions and brain. This review includes 25 studies ranged from 1976 to 2019. According to the subjects and study tools, these studies are categorized into “cognitive functions” and “executive control and reward systems.” The “cognitive functions” session includes alertness, selective attention, short-term memory, and executive control. The “executive control and reward systems” session includes the studies that adopted the magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the possible imbalance between the executive control and reward systems. The current review shows that (1) the alertness studies on BQ chewers are few and inconsistent, (2) chewing BQ can affect spatial attention distribution that facilitates target identification, (3) dependent chewers can bias their attention to BQ cues, (4) dependent chewers may have impaired spatial short-term memory, (5) the behavioral studies on executive control are few and inconsistent, (6) imaging studies, in general, show deteriorated executive control in dependent chewers, but show inconsistent patterns on the reward system. The current review discusses several research limitations for future BQ studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]