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Based on Markus and Kitayama's (1991) theory, this study was conducted to examine whether the association between emotional suppression and interpersonal harmony would be moderated by cultural group (i.e., Chinese and European Americans) and an Asian cultural value (i.e., emotional self-control). A total of 451 college students (205 Chinese and 246 European Americans) participated in this study. As expected, results indicated that the association between emotional suppression and interpersonal harmony was significantly positive for Chinese but not significant for European Americans. Similarly, when emotional self-control was examined as a moderator, the results still confirmed our hypotheses. That is, the association between emotional suppression and interpersonal harmony was significantly positive for those with stronger endorsement of emotional self-control but not for those with weaker endorsement of emotional self-control. Furthermore, we examined whether the above results could be replicated when forbearance (a construct similar to suppression) and distress disclosure (a construct opposite to suppression) were examined. The results showed the same pattern for forbearance and distress disclosure when cultural group or emotional self-control served as the moderator. The convergence of findings increased the robustness of our results. Finally, our data suggest that individuals from Eastern, interdependent cultures (e.g., Chinese) tend to value emotional suppression to preserve interpersonal harmony; individuals from Western, independent cultures may or may not necessarily suppress their emotions for this purpose. A comprehensive understanding of the different meanings of a specific strategy (i.e., emotional suppression) in different cultural contexts is important to promote effective cross-cultural counseling.

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In today's world of fierce competition, rendering service quality is crucial for subsistence and success for its significant influence on customer satisfaction and loyalty to organisations. Given that, related research has expanded into the purview of both business and academia in recent years. To this purpose, identifying critical service attributes to improve overall quality under resource-limiting conditions has become absolutely necessary and importance-performance analysis (IPA) has been regarded as a simple and useful technique for this requirement. However, we argue that the defect of traditional IPA is the failure to take into account gap analysis as various authors reiterated that service quality is the degree of discrepancy between customers' expectations and perceptions of the service. Therefore, this study has a transformation function which integrates IPA and gap analysis to substitute for the original ones to produce a revised matrix. Beside that, we further calculate the standardised distance from each attribute to this pivot to estimate the sub-priority of service attributes which were situated in the same quadrant. To verify the validity and the implementation of this modified model, a Taiwanese HR service agency case was then presented and effective action for each service quality attribute was also acquired.

Size-controllable polypyrrole (PPy)/multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) composites have been synthesized by in situ chemical oxidation polymerization directed by various concentrations of cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). Raman spectra, FTIR, SEM, and TEM were used to characterize their structure and morphology. These results showed that the composites are core (MWCNT)shell (PPy) tubular structures with the thickness of the PPy layer in the range of 2040 nm, depending on the concentration of CTAB. Raman and FTIR spectra of the composites are almost identical to those of PPy alone. The electrical conductivities of these composites are 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than those of PPy without MWCNTs. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc