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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the issues relating to sustainable development (SD) in the context of indigenous village development in Hong Kong.

A case study approach is used in this research. In addition to literature review, qualitative data, primarily collected through personal interviews with various stakeholders were the main source of input.

The Small House Policy (SHP) case illustrates an unsustainable policy. It underscores the interrelatedness among the relevant systems – social/cultural, economic, political and environmental – in the context of SD. In the short term, the government can at least expedite the construction of sewage facilities for the villages. Furthermore, the government can consider elevating the penalty and tightening policing/patrolling in village environs to discourage the illegal sale of “ding” rights and small houses. In the longer term, the government needs to put the rural area in order. Identifying means to zone planning would be a possible direction on this front.

Through examining the case of SHP relating to the indigenous villages in Hong Kong, the complexity of SD is thoroughly revealed.

Without sustainability TQM initiatives are usually doomed to fail. The essence of TQM is continuity over time and integration of quality management initiatives into daily organizational operations. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to define what are the key priority elements of TQM on which companies need to focus and to present an evaluation tool based on these key elements that can be used to assess the extent of progress of TQM. The tool encompasses ISO 9000 as well as TQM elements, bearing in mind that they should complement rather than conflict with each other. The research context is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a less developed country where the issue of sustainability is even more crucial than in fully industrialised countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how post-1997 Hong Kong has been perceived in Taiwan and to critically evaluate the demonstration effects of Hong Kong under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy on cross-strait relations.

“Today’s Hong Kong, Tomorrow’s Taiwan” has become a dominant discourse in cross-strait relations in recent years. The paper has adopted discourse analysis of selected texts during and after the 2014 Sunflower Movement to elucidate the disapproval of the developments of post-handover Hong Kong and the construction of the Movement’s self-identity.

It has observed the following arguments which shaped the prevailing perceptions among critics of the “One Country, Two Systems” policy: political infiltration of China in Hong Kong could be extended to Taiwan in the sense that the Beijing authorities would adopt the identical approach to manipulate Taiwan through the cross-strait trading agreements; negative perceptions and images of China and Chinese capitals as a collective aggressor and a threat, raising fear and worries in both Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Kuomintang, as a ruling party at that time under the leadership of President Ma Ying-jeoh, was dismissed by protesters as an incompetent gatekeeper and defender of Taiwan’s interests.

The pervasive sentiments and perceptions about post-1997 Hong Kong has been articulated discursively by the young activists in Taiwan and Hong Kong into a statement – “Today’s Hong Kong, Tomorrow’s Taiwan” – which has brought about a somewhat unexpected bonding effect between Hong Kong and Taiwan through a strong disapproval of “One Country, Two Systems” and the China factor, which has be reproduced, delivered and circulated in both societies since 2014.

The first aim of this paper was to discuss the learning experience of university students who participated in a service-learning project on sustainable water management. By investigating the students’ engagement in a real-world, community-based project, this study also aimed to provide insights into the effectiveness of service-learning as a pedagogical approach for sustainable development education.

This paper presented a service-learning project organized by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University on improving water quality in low-income communities. An overview of the project was provided, including the curriculum design, project contents, implementation process, as well as students’ assessments, evaluation and feedback. Based on students’ assessments, the outcomes and impacts of this project were discussed. Additionally, several barriers were identified during this project, and corresponding suggestions were proposed to improve the service quality and increase its positive impacts.

The students established 12 water filtration systems to improve the water quality in a needy village overseas. Apart from the benefits to the service recipients, the participating students experienced personal development and civic engagement measured in 10 aspects, including the application of classroom learning, adaptive problem-solving, creative thinking, community contribution, commitment to helping the disadvantaged, empathy and compassion, concern for those in need, moral commitment to civic affairs, multi-perspective analysis and informed decision-making.

Although the recorded project was not the first international service-learning project on water sustainable management, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that the whole procedure of the service-learning project was documented as a compulsory credit-bearing subject in Hong Kong universities. With the water sustainability project example, this paper shows how to integrate service-learning subjects into university curricula and what benefits and challenges they could bring.

Digital technology, which is regarded as a prominent and transformational force in modern society, encompasses a wide variety of technology that utilize digital data to process, store and transfer various types of information. Digital technologies have continually been introduced as cutting-edge information tools in order to achieve effective management of vast information that arises from the prefabrication supply chain. However, without a sufficient performance evaluation, drawbacks of technology investment, such as financial losses and ineffective resource allocation, keep occurring, which hinders the widespread implementation of digital technologies. This study demonstrates a comprehensive evaluation of digital technologies’ effects on the prefabrication supply chain based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) theory.

Specifically, the targeted digital technologies and project constraints were first identified through a systematic literature review. The effects of the digital technologies were then scored using a questionnaire survey. The TOPSIS model was established to quantitatively rank the effectiveness of selected digital technologies.

Overall, BIM technology shone out in the rankings and is regarded as the most beneficial digital solution by multi-stakeholders to the existing constraints, such as working efficiency. Collaboration patterns between different stakeholders and technology integration trend were also indicated.

Compared with existing outcomes, this study specifically focused on examining the effects of digital technologies on the prefabrication supply chain, the most significant link in the process for prefabricated structures. New findings indicate the overall performance that considered both multi-stakeholders’ preferences and project constraints. The quantitative evaluation presents a comprehensive understanding of digital technologies’ effects, enabling industrial participants to reach well-informed, strategic and profitable investment decisions.

Sensing- and warning-based technologies are widely used in the construction industry for occupational health and safety (OHS) monitoring and management. A comprehensive understanding of the different types and specific research topics related to the application of sensing- and warning-based technologies is essential to improve OHS in the construction industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current trends, different types and research topics related to the applications of sensing- and warning-based technology for improving OHS through the analysis of articles published between 1996 and 2017 (years inclusive).

A standardized three-step screening and data extraction method was used. A total of 87 articles met the inclusion criteria.

The annual publication trends and relative contributions of individual journals were discussed. Additionally, this review discusses the current trends of different types of sensing- and warning-based technology applications for improving OHS in the industry, six relevant research topics, four major research gaps and future research directions.

Overall, this review may serve as a spur for researchers and practitioners to extend sensing- and warning-based technology applications to improve OHS in the construction industry.

Due to lack of motivation, individuals often fail to perform regular exercise. In view of this, we developed a virtual trainer system (VTS) to encourage users to perform simple exercise routines regularly.

A design science approach is adopted to develop a VTS to motivate users to exercise. Study findings are based on a field experiment with 91 participants recruited from a university in Hong Kong.

Outcome-oriented reminders foster stronger perceived risks of health and perceived value of exercises, whereas virtual trainer attractiveness has insignificant effect. Perceived value of exercises is positively related to exercise participation, which has a positive relationship with work productivity.

The findings answer question of how to motivate people to continue exercising.

Findings provide insights for fitness companies to design online exercise training for users.

VTS can promote regular exercise and healthy life.

This research shows that interactive virtual agents can motivate users to exercise regularly. It contributes to the burgeoning research on the use of IT artifacts for improving exercise participation and provides practical insights into VTS designs.

The study investigated the relationships of the five dimensions of emotional intelligence: self‐awareness, self‐regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills of supervisors to subordinates' strategies of handling conflict: problem solving and bargaining. Data (N = 1,395) for this study were collected with questionnaires from MBA students in seven countries (U.S., Greece, China, Bangladesh, Hong Kong and Macau, South Africa, and Portugal). Psychometric properties of the measures were tested and improved with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and analysis of indicator and internal consistency reliabilities, and the hypotheses were tested with a structural equations model for each country. Results in the U.S. and in the combined sample provided support for the model which suggests that self‐awareness is positively associated with self‐regulation, empathy, and social skills; self regulation is positively associated with empathy and social skills; empathy and social skills are positively associated with motivation; which in turn, is positively associated with problem solving strategy and negatively associated with bargaining strategy. Differences among countries in these relationships are noted and implications for organizations discussed.

Given the importance of online social network (OSN) media features, many studies have focused on how different types of OSNs with various media features influence users’ usage and engagement. However, a recent literature review indicates that few empirical studies have considered how different types of OSNs with different information accessibility levels influence users’ beliefs and self-disclosure. By comparing two OSN platforms (OSNs with high-level information accessibility vs OSNs with low-level information accessibility), the purpose of this paper is to address this opportunity by investigating the differential impacts of the two platforms on individuals’ psychological cognition – particularly users’ social exchange beliefs – and explaining how these beliefs translate into OSN self-disclosure.

This study used a factorial design approach in an experimental setting to examine how different levels of information accessibility (high vs low), influence the social exchange beliefs (i.e. perceived social capital bridging, perceived social capital bonding and perceived privacy risks) of OSN users and subsequently influence OSN self-disclosure.

The results show that users on OSNs with high-level information accessibility express significantly higher perceived social capital bridging and perceived privacy risks than users on OSNs with low-level information accessibility. However, users on OSNs with low-level information accessibility express higher social bonding beliefs than users on OSNs with high-level information accessibility, indicating that there are different effect mechanisms toward OSN self-disclosure.

The focus of this research helps unveil the complex relationships between OSN design features (e.g. information accessibility), psychological cognition (e.g. social capital bridging, social capital bonding and privacy risks) and OSN self-disclosure. First, it clarifies the relationship between information accessibility and self-disclosure by examining the mediating effect of three core social exchange beliefs. Second, it uncovers the distinct effects of high-level information-accessible OSNs and low-level information-accessible OSNs on OSN self-disclosure.

The implicit assumption underlying the work of most anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) is that they need to change public attitudes toward corruption to ensure a cleaner future. The means of achieving this objective usually rest on sanctions, prevention, and sermons. Changing attitudes is seen to be largely a matter of prosecuting the corrupt, putting preventive measures in place, emphasizing the negative social and criminal consequences of corruption, and exhorting the public to achieve higher moral standards. Engaging the public is rarely undertaken directly. If it were, it would entail a community relations approach based on face-to-face, decentralized interaction between the ACA and the public. In principle, this approach might have three significant advantages. First, it could enable the anti-corruption message to be communicated more directly and, possibly, more effectively. Second, it might assist the ACA in identifying groups within the community which have developed, or are developing, attitudes which are potentially antithetical to its objectives. Third, it could serve as a springboard for local anti-corruption initiatives which might help to embed desired practices in the community or groups within it. In this chapter, we examine the extent to which one of the few agencies to adopt a full-blown community relations strategy – Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) – has been able to achieve those benefits.