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This chapter examines the ‘embodied turn’ in the study of traditional Chinese sports and identifies issues within this area of research. It introduces new interpretative perspectives and approaches within the framework of bodily sociology to elucidate the link between locally-informed sports practices and the formation of socialized individuals. The chapter categorises the current research into three main themes: self-giving, the creation of bodily value and the construction of national identity through sports. It then integrates these themes with the findings of embodied sociology. The chapter compiles and analyzes the existing literature on traditional Chinese sports culture from both Chinese and international scholars, offering insights into the status, rationale and challenges of bodily sociological research. By contextualising the concept of the embodied turn in traditional Chinese sports culture – through concepts such as self-givenness, self-techniques, the generation of value and the creation of collective memory – the chapter discusses the impact of bodily sociology on cultural research. The chapter advocates for further bodily sociological studies of Chinese sports culture, which could enhance the understanding of Chinese studies among Western scholars and contribute to a genuine embodied turn in this field of study. Providing one of the initial explorations of embodied studies in traditional Chinese sports, the chapter reveals a transition from broad cultural interpretations and symbolic, structuralist sociology to a phenomenological approach in sports cultural studies. It posits that the bodily sociology approach is beneficial for sports studies although current research has not yet fully realized the embodied turn.

Organizational sociology and organization studies have a long history together, while also sharing a proclivity to self-diagnose crises. Instead of taking these assessments at face value, this paper treats them as an object of study, asking what conditions have fueled them. In the case of organizational sociology, there are indications of a connection between rising levels of discontent and community building: self-identified organizational sociologists have progressively withdrawn from general debates in the discipline and turned their attention to organization studies, which, they suspect, has seen dramatic levels of growth at their expense. Organization studies, on the other hand, are still haunted by “a Faustian bargain”: leaning heavily on the authority of the social sciences, business school faculty were able to facilitate the emergence of a scholarly field of practice dedicated to the study of organizations, which they control. However, in doing so, they also set organization studies on a path of continued dependence on knowledge produced elsewhere: notably, by university disciplines such as sociology.

Body weight has a long history of functioning as a symbol of one’s beauty, social status, morality, discipline, and health. It has also been a standard inflicted much more intensely on women than men. While US culture has long idealized thinness for women, even at risky extremes, there is growing evidence that weight standards are broadening. Larger bodies are becoming more visible and accepted, while desire for and approval of a thin ideal has diminished. However, the continued widespread prevalence of anti-fat attitudes and stigma leaves uncertainty about just how much weight standards are changing. This study used an online survey (n = 320) to directly compare evaluations of thin, fat, and average size women through measures of negative stereotypes, prejudicial attitudes, and perceptions about quality of life. Results indicated that, as hypothesized, thin women were perceived less favorably than average weight women. However, fat women were perceived less favorably than both average and thin women. Men were harsher than women in their evaluations of only fat women. Additionally, participants being underweight or overweight did not produce an ingroup bias in their evaluations of underweight and overweight targets, respectively. That is, participants did not rate their own group more favorably, with the exception of overweight participants having lower prejudice toward overweight targets. These findings add to the emerging evidence that women’s weight standards are in transition, marked by an increasingly negative perception of thin women, though not necessarily growing positivity toward fat women. This evidence further points toward the need for more extensive research on attitudes of people across the entire weight spectrum.

The present study seeks to examine the impact of ethical leadership on employees’ voice behavior and internal whistleblowing in organizations. Specifically, the study investigates the mediating role of moral emotions in the link between ethical leadership and employees’ reporting behaviors such as voice behavior and internal whistleblowing.

This research utilized a sample of 200 employees from various private companies in Pakistan, gathering data via questionnaires to validate the hypotheses. We employed Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to evaluate the model and conducted a mediation analysis using 5,000 bootstrap samples.

This research found that ethical leadership positively impacts employees' moral emotions, encouraging them to voice concerns and report misdeeds. Additionally, the study affirms a direct and positive connection between ethical leadership and employees' reporting behaviors, including voice behavior and internal whistleblowing.

The findings of the study emphasized the development of ethical leadership in organizations by highlighting the critical role of ethical leadership in enhancing moral emotions, voice behavior, and whistleblowing in organizations. It highlights the necessity of promoting moral behavior to enhance organizational effectiveness and the need for ethical leaders to foster an open environment in organizations that encourages whistle bellowing and reporting of unethical practices in organizations.

The current paper extends knowledge of ethical leadership based on the social cognitive theory of morality by considering that moral emotions serve as a strong motivational cognition between ethical leadership and reporting behaviors. Particularly, by examining the mediating role of moral emotion, this study provides a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanism through which ethical leadership influences reporting behaviors of employees at workplace.

In the past 10 years, the scale of running events in China has increased dramatically, and the forms of running events have also become rich and diverse. Running is not only a social phenomenon but also a historical and cultural phenomenon as an organic part of human culture with its own sociological values in China. This chapter offers insight into the development of Chinese running culture and how this has emerged from ancient and modern Chinese running cultures based on Foucault's disciplinary power theory, biopower and the technologies of the self. This chapter argues that running culture in China constructs the subjectivity of the Chinese runners under the joint action of the technologies of power and the technologies of the self. The findings acknowledge how Chinese Runners present and express themselves by showing a ‘sense of presence’. Runners illustrate the implicit or explicit meaning and value of a particular way of life through running. Runners regard running as the technology of the self for self-expression and self-creation so that individuals can control their bodies and soul, thoughts, behaviours and ways of existence. Emerging technologies of power provide possibilities for the production of running culture in China, and the current policy under the technologies of power meets the needs of runners. In Chinese running culture, power was not oppressive but productive.

This chapter critically evaluates whether football can attain recognition as a national sport in China. Article No. 11, released by the Chinese government in 2015, aimed to develop a new national strategy centralised on the sport of football to foster consumption and enhance national soft power. Consequently, this also means encouraging Chinese football fans to support the national football team. Comparing the significance of local football clubs and the national football team to Chinese football fans is deemed meaningless and unable to generate useful information to comprehend Chinese people's attitudes towards local and national communities. Through literature comparisons with established Chinese national sports such as Chinese martial arts, badminton and table tennis, the discussion reveals that football currently falls short of meeting the general criteria of invention and popularity to be considered a Chinese national sport. In the specific Chinese context, it also proves that football fails to meet the criterion of politics, hindering its identification as a national sport. Consequently, the chapter rebuts the assumption and advocates for the validity of comparing how fans assess their fandom for local and national football teams.

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been gaining support for the role it plays in employee outcomes, such as organizational identification (OID), the view of CSR from a social identity perspective is underdeveloped. This conceptual chapter explores the role of social identity processes grounded in organizational justice to develop a model of CSR attributions and the moderating role these attributions play in organizational member outcomes. CSR is understood as the relational processes happening with stakeholders, and these relationships engage specific organizational identity orientations. The social identity process flows from there, resulting in CSR attributions including strategic, relational, and virtuous. Using social identity, organizational identity, and organizational justice, this chapter makes two specific contributions: a CSR attribution typology grounded in organizational justice and the moderating impact of these attributions between activated justice dimensions and resulting organizational member outcomes.

The chapter articulates the transition to and evolution of the commercialisation of Chinese professional football. It is periodised based on major turning points. The research yielded two major findings. First, there exists a distinct ‘Chinese way’ of commercialising football. However, it does not indicate that Chinese football doggedly avoided the Western governance model. For the club governance, Chinese football authorities set about recommending privately operated enterprises, large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises. Second, the commercialisation transitions of professional football in China were triggered by exogenous policy shifts, rather than endogenous changes in market structures, resulting in higher horizontal financial fragility than is associated with the commercialisation model adopted in more developed Western markets. The applicability to voluntary football clubs is assessed as well.