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Drawing on social exchange theory, this study examines when and why high performers may fail to obtain supervisory career mentoring (SCM). Although high performance by protégés often makes SCM more efficient and successful, we argue that supervising mentors may be reluctant to offer SCM due to the victimization of high performers that has been shown by recent findings in the supervision literature. We further propose that high performers should be high in perspective‐taking, a core relational competence and a key individual factor that moderates the relationship between protégé performance and SCM. Findings from a multi‐source multi‐time survey (Study 1) and an online experiment (Study 2) consistently show that when high performers are low in perspective‐taking, they are less likely to receive SCM. Moreover, the findings from Study 2 also show that low perspective‐taking by high performers significantly reduces supervisors' expected benefits from mentoring them, which in turn leads to the supervisors having low willingness to mentor. Our research therefore highlights the importance of taking into account the interaction between task and relational competence in understanding how protégé characteristics may influence SCM in organizational settings. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications. Practitioner points: At workplace, employees tend to focus on improving their performance and task competence and believe that high performance can help them receive more resources to develop their career. However, if they cannot imagine oneself in another's shoes, high performance can lead to less positive results.High performers should take others' perspective to understand what others feel and think to reduce potential threats seen by the supervisor and their colleagues. Therefore, task and relational competence are equally important.Organizations can help their employees develop this perspective‐taking, including creating more opportunities (e.g., informal social events or formal training) for employees and their supervisors to understand each other's work roles, perspectives and values, which can help employees to understand their supervisors' views and stand in their supervisors' shoes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author discusses: (1) the basic characteristics of the concept of Traditional Chinese Systems views, including the concepts of Universalism and unified systems and the concepts of Fundamentalism and Holism systems; (2) the concepts of Pluralistic and local systems embedded in the Philosophy of Scientific Practice and New Empiricism; (3) the necessity of Local Realism to Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology and the significance of social organization and management embedded in the concepts of pluralistic and local systems. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western theoretical traditions can benefit from systematic engagement with non- Western concepts: This is shown through an analysis of the Chinese concept guanxi. After considering the general nature of guanxi, including its possible association with corrupt practices and its particular cultural characteristics, the paper goes on to identify the elements of its general form which have universal representation. The possibility of conceiving guanxi as a variant form of social capital is explored. This shows the way in which both the expressive and instrumentalized forms of guanxi indicate otherwise neglected aspects of social and economic relationships not always recognized and addressed by analogous terms current in social theory but which are none the less important for its advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of a large number of Chinese women and the widespread concern about women's living conditions, this study aimed to examine how subjective well‐being mediates the association between marital relationship and women's quality of life in Chinese context. The data used in this study were collected by conducting a multi‐stage cluster random sampling method of 756 women in Huai'an city of Mainland China. Data included women's basic demographics, women's quality of life and marital quality, and women's subjective well‐being. Structural equation modeling was adopted to analyze the data. The results of structural equation modeling analysis suggested a good fit for the sample. Overall findings showed that marital relationship has a significantly direct effect on women's quality of life, and subjective well‐being can partially mediate the impact of marital relationship on women's quality of life. The implications on theory and social policy were also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits well-travelled ethnographic portrayals of traditional Chinese family dynamics to draw attention to desire as a product of family life and to how crucial elements of family organization and ideology can be understood, in turn, as effects of desire - that is, as instituted fantasies. Although my case in point is the Chinese family, the analysis addresses the category 'family' cross-culturally. In any of its variations, the 'family' exists at two synergistically implicated levels: first, it comprises an important part of the reality into which individuals are socialized; second, it embodies in instituted form individuals' attempts to realize - to bring into being - social arrangements as they would like them to be. In the Chinese case, at least two ironies are embedded in this synergy. First, women are primary producers and reproducers of the family in the 'real world', despite the fact that patriliny as 'instituted fantasy' downplays or veils their agency. Second, the normative subordination of the son to a patriarchal father, expressed and mediated through institutions including ancestor worship and valorization of filial piety, veils a valorizing of the son as agent or protagonist of filial action. Although ultimately unrealizable, patrilineal and familial fantasies animate Chinese family life and are thus an important constituent of Chinese realities. To these ends the analysis re-purposes 'the symbolic' and 'imaginaries', categories widely employed in contemporary gender studies and social theory, arguing that understanding kinship enjoins incorporating desire's role both in defining institutions and in motivating their creators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]