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The paper is a pioneering attempt to study the relative competitiveness of Association of South East Asian Nations – ASEAN‐10, 31 provinces of mainland China and 35 states of India by disaggregate approach vis‐à‐vis ranking and simulation studies.

The proposed methodology is based on the standard ranking adopted by the World Competitive Yearbook but redefines a relevant set of data matrix consisting of 101 indicators to better reflect local conditions and characteristics of local economies. Under the proposed methodological approach, the basis of ranking is the standardized value (STD), and first the 31 economies' average for each indicator were computed following which the standard deviation was calculated. STD was computed by subtracting the 31 economies' average from an economy's original value and then dividing the result by the standard deviation.

The empirical findings revealed the specific shifts in relative competitiveness between China and India over decades and over four different environments, namely economics, government‐institutions, business social categories. It was found that competitive provinces for China are concentrated along the eastern coastal region, whereas more competitive states of India are well distributed across the Indian continent. This implies that the Chinese government needs to play a more pro‐active role in drawing foreign direct investment to less developed western, central and north eastern China by way of infrastructure development, tax incentives and investment in education in those regions. Studies further revealed that Vietnam is a rapid rising economy drawing closer towards Thailand while Indonesia and Philippines are deteriorating within the ten Associate of Southeast Asian Nations. Based on these empirical findings, comparative strategies and cooperation for growth and development amongst China, India and ASEAN were drawn.

The fundamental raison d'être of this study stems from the desire to address an area of research gap previously overlooked. Most international studies on competitiveness rankings to date either ranked economies across the globe and/or by population sizes. One of the critical issues in emerging economies of Asia is the uneven regional development, especially the urban‐rural growth disparity amongst local economies of China and India. Through competitiveness ranking of vast and diverse economies such as China, India and ASEAN‐10.

States that since the mid‐1980s, substantial deregulation and competitive liberalization of the South‐East Asian economies in their trade and investment regimes has resulted in greater integration of their economies with the North‐East Asian economies. Proposes that, together with the rising purchasing power of the expanding middle class, massive infrastructural development, as well as the expansion in intra‐regional trade and investment, East Asia has emerged as an independent centre of growth in the global economy since the early 1990s. Presents empirical evidence on the rise of this autonomous growth momentum. Contends that, no longer a mere wagon hitched to the locomotive of the US and European economy, East Asia′s emerging independent engine of growth has tremendous implications for executives of multinationals keen to expand market share and form strategic alliances with companies in East Asia. Submits that it also has implications for fund managers in the OECD countries keen to look to the region for asset diversification and higher returns.

This article discusses how Singapore does,which has gone beyond old age and certain traditional aspects, in terms of providing social security for its people. While there are no unemployment insurance benefits because of the economic philosophy of the paternalistic government which believes that maintaining a bouyant economy is the best “insurance”, there are many other unique schemes under the Central Provident Fund (CPF) which try to assure socio‐economic welfare. From housing, the CPF schemes have extended to medical, tertiary education and asset enhancement of CPF members. Inter‐generational provisions are also encouraged which strengthen the family as a very crucial social unit. The government hopes on one hand to give the people some self‐determination and self‐destiny of their choice in social security matters. On the other, it does have many means of ensuring that people make the “right” choices. With budget surpluses, the government has also been able to “top‐up” CPF members’ saving in a few ways. All in all, despite the economic inefficiency one may criticise of enforced saving, for the political economy in Singapore, the CPF mechanism appears to have served its purposes. However, some rethinking especially in terms of privatising more schemes may be wanted by the people in time.

This paper reviews the strategic responses of successful local Chinese banks (LCBs) in the changeable Hong Kong banking sector over the past decades. Given the mixed outlook of the industry resulting from the handover of sovereignty, financial internationalization, and regional and domestic economic developments, this paper also discusses the benefits of using strategic alliance as a means for LCBs to meet current and future challenges. Based on case reviews, the paper demonstrates the values of strategic management concepts for small banks to cope with an externally oriented and politically uncertain operating environment.

Millions of social media users over the last two decades have become dependent on social media that has negatively affected their lives, both physically and mentally. Earlier attempts on social media addiction (SMA) scale development have not been made in India which makes it essential to undertake such a study in this region. One of the objectives of this study was to explore and identify the relevant dimensions of the SMA in the literature. The main study objective was to develop and validate a scale on SMA in India.

The research design applied in this work was both qualitative and quantitative. Based on the literature review, some themes of SMA were recognized that were used to conduct semi-structured interviews with the concerned subjects. The interviews conducted were then transcribed, and using NVivo software application, content analysis was carried out. This helped in the identification of relevant themes that were used for preparing the questionnaire. After that an exploratory study was conducted to explore the factors of SMA. This was followed by a confirmatory analysis on a different sample that validated the instrument.

This work developed and validated a six-factor measure of SMA. The total numbers of items in the final instrument are 22. Salience, Tolerance, Mood Modification, Relapse, Withdrawal and Conflict are the six factors of the final scale.

The current designed instrument can be exceptionally functional for evaluating the occurrence and level of the SMA. This can also serve to assist in the handling and management of such online addictive behavior. A lot of productivity is lost due to the unwarranted time spent on the social media. By better understanding the dimensions of SMA, one can limit one's time on such networks.

This work can provide valuable insight into this domain and help in understanding and treatment of this malaise. It can also help parents and other stakeholders at large to comprehend the danger linked with the excessive social media use and therefore, contribute towards the society. These dimensions can also help counsellors and psychologists to better understand the addiction behavior and accordingly counsel the concerned individual.

Although many instruments have been developed in the past by researchers to measure SMA,still some aspects of the concept remain under-researched. Moreover, most of such research has been confined to the developed world regions.

The purpose of this research is to identify the core values and key success factors in strategic sourcing; and to examine the importance of strategic sourcing and the key success factors in the Hong Kong toy industry. In addition, the relationship between the implementation of the key factors and sourcing performance in the Hong Kong toy industry are investigated.

The empirical research is based on a questionnaire survey that collected data from 205 Hong Kong toy companies. The survey investigated the degree of importance of key success strategic sourcing factors and the extent of implementation of the key factors in the companies. Furthermore, the sourcing performance of the companies was measured to investigate its relationship with the implementation of the key factors.

The research identifies five core values and 14 key success factors in strategic sourcing through literature reviews. The survey findings indicate that the identified key success factors are important and positively related to the sourcing performance. Moreover, the results show that the implementation of strategic sourcing in the Hong Kong toy industry is lagging behind the degree of importance of strategic sourcing.

Since there is a gap between the implementation and importance of strategic sourcing, there is room for the Hong Kong toy industry to improve sourcing performance by addressing the 14 key success factors.

The paper identifies the key success strategic sourcing factors to improve sourcing performance in the Hong Kong toy industry.