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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a few leading Hong Kong construction firms are also efficient contractors. Theoretically, market leaders can exploit the virtue of economy of scale, learning curve and cost leadership to consolidate their competitiveness. However, if market share is key success factor for firms to become and stay competitive, smaller contractors will be further marginalized if the construction market continues to shrink as Hong Kong's economy approaches maturity. Hence the research question is: Have a few leading contractors been taking advantage of their market size to be efficient in Hong Kong?

Based on the Data Envelopment Analysis Assurance Region (DEA_AR) model, the efficiency scores of 17 major Hong Kong contractors are compiled over the last ten years. DEA is a non‐parametric approach to examine the relative efficiency among different firms, in terms of output/input ratios. Unlike traditional I‐O analysis which relies on a static table of coefficients, DEA does not require any priori and usually subjective weights for inputs or outputs.

The results identify efficient contractors, among which the three leading ones (China State Construction, Shui On Construction and Yau Lee Holdings) have captured the majority of housing construction contract values. Nevertheless, only China State Construction has ranked consistently as most efficient over time. The efficiency scores of Shui On Construction have decreased successively from 2002 to 2009, and it has been the least efficient contractor from 2006 to 2009. Yau Lee Holdings has a V‐curve of efficiency scores.

This study represents the first attempt to adopt a DEA_AR model to evaluate construction contractors' efficiency, which reduces the number of zeroes and the variation in weights for estimation and enhances the adequacy for individual contractor's efficiency scores, compared to other types of DEA models such as the CCR model and the BCC model.

The purpose of this study is to present and compare the productive efficiency of China Mainland and China Hong Kong contractors, and to identify and investigate the components and sources of their efficiency under different economic and institutional environments.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a non‐parametric approach to examine the relative efficiency among different firms. This study employs DEA based Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) to compile the efficiency scores of 20 construction companies listed in the Hong Kong Exchange and Clearing Limited (HKEx) from 2004 to 2010.

A decomposition of MPI suggests that catch‐up effect has contributed more to contractor's efficiency than frontier‐shift effect. Compared to their Mainland counterparts, Hong Kong contractors have higher MPI mainly due to higher efficiency scores in catch‐up effect.

Hong Kong contractors have advantage over Mainland contractors in their managerial and strategic capabilities. Hence Hong Kong contractors should lever on their managerial expertise in accounting, financing and legal services when exporting their services. Meanwhile, Mainland contractors should improve their efficiency by making the most use of their technological and human resources, thus improving upon their international entrepreneurship.

This study is the first attempt to apply MPI to compare the productive efficiency of listed contractors in China Mainland and China Hong Kong. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge for productive efficiency measurement.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

This study offers a structured literature review (SLR) on female digital entrepreneurship (DE). This is done by providing insights into the recent developments of the topic, reviewing and critiquing previous studies in the literature, and pinpointing areas for future potential studies.

A comprehensive SLR was conducted on 18 papers published between 2017 and 2022 by discipline, time, methodologies, context, topic, and theoretical emphasis. The authors employed the three phases of critical research – insight, critique, and transformative redefinition – to conduct the literature review.

The literature on female DE is inadequate, fragmented, and divergent in terms of less practice-based insights. Furthermore, most female DE research is published in nonspecialized journals. The examination of the impact of gender and cross-country comparative studies is scarce. Existing literature lacks epistemological and methodological diversity. The lack of theoretical connections across the various research areas on female entrepreneurship may be the reason why this area of study has proven difficult for scholars. Few authors exhibit high specialization in the topic, whereas most authors contribute to either DE or female entrepreneurship.

This SLR research aims to provide an overview of the female DE field by identifying the current trend of research and recognizing future research directions and to improve readers’ knowledge of this research branch.

This review has classified the field's main topics and found that the influence of context (institutional and social) is the most investigated issue. Further, it presents a potential for practitioners' contribution to the field as coauthors and outlines needed studies.

This study provides a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary, updated review and research agenda that supplements rather than substitutes the existing literature reviews on female entrepreneurship. Moreover, this study makes a significant contribution by presenting the stages of development in female DE research within the context of the overall literature on female entrepreneurship.

We have observed in the reports of those engaged in the administration of the Acts several references to the practice of milking so that a portion of the milk is left in the udder of the cow, this portion being removed subsequently and not included in the milk sent out to customers. The inspector for the southern division of the county of Northampton reports that on a sample of milk being found deficient in fat to the extent of 17 per cent., a further sample was taken at the time of milking when a milkman was found to be not properly “stripping” the cows. He was warned. The analyst for the county of Notts writes: “The first strippings obtained before the milk glands have been normally excited by the milking are very low in fat yet are “genuine” milk in the sense that nothing has been added to or taken from it. It is nonsense to talk of genuine milk in the sense that everything that comes from the udder of the cow is to be taken as genuine milk fit for sale.” In a case tried before the Recorder of Middlesbrough, one witness said that among some farmers it was a common practice not to “strip” cows until after the milk was sent away.

The Board of Agriculture, by virtue of the powers conferred upon them by the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, have made regulations whereby it may be presumed, until the contrary is proved, that milk containing less than 8·5 per cent. of solids‐not‐fat, or less than 3 per cent of fat, is adulterated within the meaning of the Act. The suggested limit for fat in milk recommended by the special committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture was 3·per cent., and it will therefore be observed that the new regulations have fixed a standard for milk‐fat which is even lower than the low limit recommended by the committee. There are even rumours that a further lowering of this standard is to bo urged upon the authorities. Although from the point of view of Public Analysts and the officials responsible for the enforcement of the Food and Drugs Acts it is satisfactory that an official standard for the composition of milk has at last been set up, it is idle to suppose that the fixing of such a limit will materially improve the character of the milk‐supply as a whole. It should be remembered that milk which contains only 3 per cent of fat, although under the new regulations legally “genuine,” is, as a matter of fact, of the poorest quality, and is only produced by a cow when in bad condition, or by a particular breed of cow which is remarkable more for the quantity than for the quality of the fluid yielded. Producers and vendors of milk of good quality have been placed in a very unfortunate position by the new regulations, as the tendency of the trade will be to lower all milk to the official limits, with the result that those dealers who are still desirous of maintaining a high standard of quality will have to compete in the matter of price with less conscientious traders, who, taking advantage of the protection afforded by the regulations, will be enabled to sell to the public “genuine” milk, from which all “superfluous” fat has been removed. Gradation of quality in an article of food cannot, of course, be provided for by official regulation, and for the purpose of legal classification it is only possible to differentiate between legally “genuine” and adulterated articles. Therefore, in a legal sense, and also in a popular sense, a milk containing 4 per cent. of fat is no more “ genuine ” than one containing 3 per cent., although the former is, of course, a superior article. Competition in the dairy trade, which has of late years become very keen, will, as the result of the fixing of this standard, become more acute than before, and to keep their position it will be necessary for those milk‐vendors who are desirous of maintaining their reputation as vendors of milk of good quality to give to their customers some guarantee that their product is indeed superior to the legalised article. Any statements of the traders themselves upon this point will naturally be received by customers with reserve, as proceeding from an interested source, and the guarantee, to be effective, must therefore be given by an authority whose statements are above suspicion. It is hero that the system of Control will be found to be a necessity both to the milk dealer and milk consumer.

LIBRARIES have come impressively into the public picture in the past year or two, and seldom with more effect than when Their Majesties the King and Queen opened the new Central Reference Library at Manchester on July 17th. In a time, which is nearly the end of a great depression, that the city which probably felt the depression more than any in the Kingdom should have proceeded with the building of a vast store‐house of learning is a fact of great social significance and a happy augury for libraries as a whole. His Majesty the King has been most felicitous in providing what we may call “slogans” for libraries. It will be remembered that in connection with the opening of the National Central Library, he suggested that it was a “University which all may join and which none need ever leave” —words which should be written in imperishable letters upon that library and be printed upon its stationery for ever. As Mr. J. D. Stewart said at the annual meeting of the National Central Library, it was a slogan which every public library would like to appropriate. At Manchester, His Majesty gave us another. He said: “To our urban population open libraries are as essential to health of mind, as open spaces to health of body.” This will be at the disposal of all of us for use. It is a wonderful thing that Manchester in these times has been able to provide a building costing £450,000 embodying all that is modern and all that is attractive in the design of libraries. The architect, Mr. Vincent Harris, and the successive librarians, Mr. Jast and Mr. Nowell, are to be congratulated upon the crown of their work.

To examine how social media restrict and recreate messages within current interactionist scripts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this study applies a framework of digital reflexivity highlighting stages of information flow. It applies the symbolic interaction concept of emotional events to analyze the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the role of social media in disseminating Bouazizi’s act as one catalyst of the MENA citizen uprisings. The role of social media in the “Arab Spring” merits investigation because social media provide opportunities to examine shifting identities, interactions, and actions of citizen activists in the MENA uprisings. This study is important and timely because little symbolic interactionist scholarship exists on MENA identities and social movements, or on crowd interaction and activism outside the West. The nuanced nature of MENA political activism and complex processes of the development of activists’ “mutable” selves (Zurcher, 1977) are fluid and resistant to symbolically defined social roles, interactionist scripts and reflexivity, and public communication practices in a MENA under political and social transition.

AT the time this appears about ten per cent of the librarians of this country will be studying how best to profit by the Hastings conference at the end of the month. The town itself is interesting, the old and new being combined in a quite graciously intriguing manner, and the library service there is worthy of attention. We say that pointedly because the pressure of these meetings is so great that the library of the place, the local example of all librarians stand for, is, by the majority, not even visited. In our October issue we hope to give an impression, at any rate a preliminary one, of the proceedings. From the advance notices, which are all that are as yet available, they are to revolve somewhat loosely round staff, stock, and standards, which can be made to cover the whole of librarianship, so that we need not descant upon its importance or pretend that it presents any original subject. Its treatment we hope will be so, as the most ordinary library topic is an old one, but fresh light upon it is always possible. The speakers appear to be all librarians of relatively small libraries and, as these comprise 75% at least of public libraries, there can be no quarrel with that. The new chairman of the L.A. Education Committee, Mr. W. B. Paton, is to look again at the pressing question of staff recruitment and training; we know he will look with clear eyes at a real problem. The Annual Lecture will be by Sir Ben Bowen Thomas, who is Permanent Secretary of the Welsh Department of the Ministry of Education. There will be the usual section meetings, annual dinner, and exhibition. We may be sure that the Presidential Address will be characteristic of Mr. C. B. Oldman, which means that it will be a scholarly reflection of many or some of his wide range of library interests; and also that, under his guidance, the whole conference will be managed well.

As part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES), a long-term ecological research project that conducts research in metropolitan Baltimore as an ecological system, scientists have measured the effect of urbanization on entire watersheds, such as Gwynns Falls, from headwaters to the Chesapeake Bay. In general, urbanization has buried many seasonal headwater streams and has contributed to the erosion of extant streams due to flashy urban storm runoff in what was a slow moving, beaver-dominated landscape (Elmore & Kaushal, 2008; Brush, 2009). This chapter fuses scientific ecological research in Baltimore with ethnographic evidence of human ecological technologies practiced in Northern Thailand. Anthropologist Shigeharu Tanabe studied one such ecological technology practiced for centuries in Chiang Mai called muang fai. More recently, a royally inspired community project of forest regeneration was successfully completed through small headwater dam building in nearby Lampang. The authors report on a recently conducted survey of the sites Tanabe documented in the 1970s and the results of the community reforestation project in relation to design proposals for three neighborhoods in Baltimore. The ecological research in Baltimore and the ethnographic research in Chiang Mai are integrated in this chapter to argue for new sustainable design practices in urban headwaters that combine ethnography, scientific monitoring, and design.