Search results

Taking advantage of the 2008 Sichuan Great Earthquake as a natural experiment, the purpose of this paper is to examine the motives and effects of corporate donations by focusing on how firm ownership identity as the first-order governance mechanism affects the motives and effects of disaster relief donations.

The authors conduct regressions and market event studies, and use matching to address the confounding effects of differences in firm characteristics.

The authors hypothesize that private firms that are better governed than state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more likely to donate for value maximization. Consistent with this, the authors find that private firms are more likely to donate to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and donate more than SOEs. The effects of secondary governance variables in the donation determinant models (e.g. board independence and managerial ownership) are more consistent with the value maximization argument. While short-term market reaction to donation announcement is not significant for private firms, it is lower when SOEs make a large donation. Consistent with the hypothesis, the authors find that over the 24–36 months following the donation, private donors realize a higher abnormal stock return.

The study contributes to the debate over the merits/costs of corporate donations and helps better understand how SOEs and private firms (particularly family-owned firms) differ in their governance and financial decision-making.

Both managers from private firms and SOEs can use the findings of this study to better guide their donation and other philanthropic decisions.

This study is the first to examine both the motives and effects of corporate donations by both private and SOEs taking advantage of the 2008 Sichuan, thereby significantly extending prior related studies.

The paper aims to integrate relevant “people” into public-private partnerships (PPP) to establish a public–private–people partnership (4P) approach that targets more sustainable and better value for money post-disaster infrastructure projects. This recognises “people” as major stakeholders apart from the public and private sectors. This paper also draws on a parallel study of relationship management (RM) to counteract problems arising from multiple participants and to synergise the public, private and “people” groupings.

Semi-structured interviews, questionnaire surveys, a case study and a validation exercise through a focus group meeting were adopted to obtain empirical data and develop the 4P framework. Triangulation research strategy combining literature review, interviews and questionnaire survey were adopted in the parallel study of RM.

It is concluded that 4P has great potential to achieve the targets of enhanced sustainability and value of money in post-disaster scenarios. In addition, “people” can provide the “missing link” in traditional PPP to further cement the partnership and achieve effective and integrated partnership between multiple participants.

This paper adds a new dimension to PPP in proposing the integration of “people” into PPP to address prevalent gaps in identifying overall sustainable value. It also develops a practical 4P framework to guide practitioners who may wish to test it, to whatever extent possible. In parallel, it provides a methodological and theoretical foundation for such public, private and people partnerships in post-disaster infrastructure development.

This paper aims to highlight key challenges to the rule of law in Hong Kong.

This study deploys a historical and legal approach to explore the key challenges to the rule of law in Hong Kong. In particular, this paper analyzes legal conflicts in Hong Kong.

The findings show how the rule of law in Hong Kong has become a prominent battlefield of a constitutional struggle between Hong Kong Law and Chinese Law.

This paper hypothesizes that the conflicts arise from the different interpretations and conceptualizations of the rule of law between China and Hong Kong.

Most megaprojects focus on overcoming current infrastructure capacity problems or opening up new business opportunities, while a few may be inspired by iconic-symbolic or socio-political drivers. Also, many megaprojects may be seen to focus on benefitting proximate stakeholders in the short-medium term. A case is made here, for aligning the immediate expectations from a megaproject with a parallel focus on the best overall value for all, including long-term stakeholders, thereby also targeting more meaningful and sustainable contributions to the built environment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper draws together and synergises relevant findings from two completed PhD projects and another research project in Hong Kong. Additionally, a focused literature survey and a case study, also contribute to the development of the proposed concepts and strategies. This is therefore a hybrid between a “review” paper and a “conceptual” paper where a suite of significant improvements to current practice are conceptualised and proposed, based on logical integration of relevant findings from the above three research projects, literature review and case study.

Inadequate stakeholder engagement has led to many process disruptions and adverse outcomes in recent megaprojects. A structured approach focusing throughout on common overall value from the outset is proposed to achieve better and more sustainable megaproject outcomes. Specific recommendations include: aligning megaproject stakeholder objectives with regional or even national needs and targeting co-creation of common value through early stakeholder involvement in planning and design of built infrastructure megaprojects.

The increasing number, scale and complexity of megaprojects has amplified their impact on the built environment and its sustainability, hence the imperative to incorporate sustainability considerations, so as to formulate and manage megaprojects better. The proposed approaches in this paper can help revamp megaproject strategies towards such sustainable outcomes.

Hong Kong has a global reputation as an entrepreneurial hub. The Japanese restaurant community has grown and evolved over the last three decades into what many consider as a natural secondary market for Japanese food. As such, several Japanese restaurateurs have come to Hong Kong to enter Hong Kong’s premium Japanese restaurant market. The purpose of this paper is to explore this market of Japanese restaurateurship in Hong Kong.

One of the closest methodologies within the topic and discipline from Baldwin (2017) focuses on Japaneseness as a measurement of culinary authenticity examining Hong Kong’s Michelin rated restaurants. Here, the qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with the chefs of two sets of premium Japanese restaurants from Japan that expanded in Hong Kong, Sushi Iwa and Sushi Yoshitake. As this paper focuses on the premium and high-end market of Japanese chefs and restaurateurs in Hong Kong, the researcher combined the approaches of Kawahara & Speece and Baldwin to pursue a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews.

For this research, the interview process had to be divided into two stages. The first was to speak with long standing members of Hong Kong’s Japanese restaurant community. The common thread amongst the restaurateurs was that they were either the sole proprietor or a partner who was financially vested within the company not a form of sweat equity. To respect the privacy of the interviews, questions about exact monetary amounts, number of shares and equity or anything regarding holdings were not asked. The idea was to only examine their responses within the criteria of the research objectives.

As the Michelin and premium market of Japanese cuisine is so small, this research can only represent a certain part of the market. Future research could examine other Japanese restaurateurs outside of this market that could be examined to gain a wider perspective of the entrepreneurial strategies they used to start-up their business in Hong Kong.

As research in this area is very limited, this paper helps bring restaurateurship in Hong Kong into the academic front. Restaurants are one of the most common entry points for new entrepreneurs in hospitality. This paper may help shed some light on how foreign investment entrepreneurship has been achieved in Asia.

This paper analyses the development, regulation and future trend of the corporate insurance market in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Using data for 212 Chinese listed companies over the period 1997‐99, this study provides some preliminary empirical evidence regarding the property insuring behaviour of Chinese companies. I find that the level of property insurance spending in Chinese companies is inversely related to company size and leverage. Additionally, the purchase of property insurance appears to vary according to geographical location and industry sectors. However, foreign ownership does not appear to have important influences on the managerial property insurance decisions in the Chinese corporate sector. The findings of this study could thus have important implications for various groups (e.g., corporate lenders and foreign insurers) that are interested in the Chinese corporate sector and insurance markets.

Delays in construction projects are both disruptive and expensive. Thus, potential causes of schedule deviation need to be identified and mitigated. In previous research, delay factors were predominantly identified through surveys administered to stakeholders in construction projects. Such delay factors are typically considered individually and presented at the same level without explicitly examining their sequence of occurrence and inter-relationships. In reality, owing to the complex structure of construction projects and long execution time, non-conformance to schedule occurs by a chain of cascading events. An understanding of these linkages is important not only for minimising the delays but also for revealing the liability of stakeholders. To explicitly illustrate the cause–effect and logical relationship between delay factors and further identify the primary factors which possess the highest significance toward the overall project schedule delay, the fault tree analysis (FTA) method, a widely implemented approach to root cause problems in safety-critical systems, has been systematically and rigorously executed.

Using a case study, the in-depth analysis for identifying the most fundamental delay factors has been fulfilled through FTA's tree structure. The logical deduction for mapping and visualising the chronological and cause–effect relationships between various delay factors has been conducted through the logical gate functions of FTA based on the data collected from the site event log, pre-fabricated structural component manufacturing log and face-to-face interview with project stakeholders.

The analysis identified multiple delay factors and showed how they are linked logically and chronologically from the primary causes to the ultimate undesired event in a rigorous manner. A comparison was performed between the proposed FTA model and the conventional investigation method for revealing the responsibility employed in the construction industry, consisting of event logs and problem reports. The results indicate that the FTA model provides richer information and a clearer picture of the network of delay factors. Importantly, the ability of FTA in revealing the causal connection between the events leading to the undesired delays and in comprehending their prominence in the real-world construction project has been clearly displayed.

This study demonstrates a new application of FTA in the construction sector allowing the delay factors to be understood and visualised from a new perspective. The new approach has practical use in finding and removing root causes of the delay, as well as clarifying the attribution of responsibility that causes the delay.

During the cooperation process between prefabricated building construction enterprises (PBCEs) and Internet platforms (IPs), the sentiments of both parties influence their behavioral strategies. They are the key to improving the informatization and operational efficiency of the prefabricated building industry chain (PBIC).

This paper introduces mental accounting theory and rank-dependent expected utility theory to construct the MA-RDEU game model, exploring the evolutionary mechanism between sentiment and behavioral strategies of PBCEs and IPs.

The study indicates that (1) a mixed strategy equilibrium can be achieved when both parties have no sentiments. (2) PBCEs and IPs are more likely to achieve an optimal equilibrium for cooperation if the latter is optimistic. In contrast, pessimism may lead both parties to prioritize self-interest when only one party has a sentiment. (3) The combined impact of sentiments and behavioral strategies on decision-making is significant: the influence of sentiments from PBCEs or IPs on the optimal strategy for achieving cooperation is contingent upon the behavioral strategies of the other party; different behavioral strategies of IPs or PBCEs can have varying effects on sentiments when both parties have sentiments. (4) The influence of external factors on the sentiments and behavior strategies of PBCEs and IPs is apparent. PBCEs and IPs should concurrently consider the combined influence of external factors and sentiments to contribute to the realization of cooperation between the two parties. Additionally, government supervision is an effective means to restrain “free-riding” behavior.

Finally, based on the above conclusions, the paper proposes measures to improve the construction of service-oriented IPs and establish a mechanism for monitoring and adjusting risk sentiments. Meanwhile, this paper also indicates that under the combined effect of the government, PBCEs and IPs, the influence of external factors on sentiments can be maintained within a controllable scope and the risks of uncertainty can be mitigated.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of second phase precipitate size on microstructure, hardness, density, corrosion and electrical conductivity of 7075 aluminum alloy fabricated by the powder metallurgy method and aged at 120°C for various aging periods.

For the aging process (T6), these alloys were solution-treated at 485°C for 2 h, quenched, aged at 120°C for four various periods and finally air cooled. After the aging process, these alloys were examined with scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, density and hardness measurements. The corrosion tests were carried out using the potentiodynamic polarization technique; electrical conductivity values were measured as IACS%.

Results showed that the precipitate size increased with increasing aging period and the maximum precipitate size was achieved for the sample aged for 28 h. The maximum hardness was attained for the sample aged for 24 h, while the same specimen obtained the lowest electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance.

In this research, second phase precipitates of heat treatment processing affected the electrical conductivity and corrosion behavior of the 7075 aluminum alloy. Also it is understood that the heat treatment period is an effective parameter on these properties.