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This paper reports an investigation of the performance of a sample of office buildings in Hong Kong which were marketed as being intelligent. A summary review of literature charting the development of intelligent buildings and perspectives of what intelligence means when applied to office buildings provides a basis for the study. Adopting a fitness‐for‐purpose perspective, as the approach adopted most widely for evaluations, data on the buildings’ designs (incorporation of intelligence features), users’ requirements and occupants’ views of performance of their workplaces were collected via questionnaire surveys. Analysis followed the building ranking method adopted by Harrison. Results indicate that only a minority of the office buildings marketed as “intelligent” achieve the level of performance to match users’ and occupants’ requirements and so constitute business value intelligent buildings; the majority are underachieving.

While the origin of Korean Industrial Relations goes back 150 years when the country opened its seaports to foreign countries, it didn’t emerge as a field of study until 1950s when academics began to write books and papers on the Korean labor movement, labor laws, and labor economics. In this paper, we sketch this history and describe important events and people that contributed to the development of industrial relations in Korea. Korean industrial relations in the early 20th century were significantly distorted by the 35-year-Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). After regaining its independence, the U.S. backed, growth-oriented, military-based, authoritarian Korean government followed suit and consistently suppressed organized labor until 1987. Finally, the 1987 Great Labor Offensive allowed the labor movement to flourish in a democratized society. Three groups were especially influential in the field of industrial relations in the early 1960s: labor activists, religious leaders, and university faculty. Since then, numerous scholars have published books and papers on Korean industrial relations, whose perspectives, goals, and processes are still being debated and argued. The Korean Industrial Relations Association (KIRA) was formed on March 25, 1990 and many other academic and practitioner associations have also come into being since then. The future of industrial relations as a field of study in Korea does not seem bright, however. Issues regarding organized labor are losing attention because of a steadily shrinking unionization rate, changing societal attitude toward labor unions, and the enactment of new and improved laws and regulations regarding employment relationships more broadly. Thus, we suggest that emerging issues such as contingent workers, works councils and tripartite partnership, conflict management, and human rights will be addressed by the field of industrial relations in Korea only if this field breaks with its traditional focus on union and union–management relations.

The Hanbo (meaning Korean treasure) scandal or “Hanbogate” occurred on January 23, 1997, with the bankruptcy of Hanbo Iron and Steel Company, the second largest steel company and 14th largest conglomerate in South Korea, as its debt had accumulated to US$5.6 billion. Hanbo's bankruptcy triggered an investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office that resulted in the imprisonment for 15 years of Hanbo's founder, Chung Tae-Soo, for bribing politicians and bankers to pressure banks to extend hugh bank loans to Hanbo. Nine other persons were also convicted including Chung's son, who was jailed for three years for bribery and embezzlement, and Kim Hyun-Chol, the second son of President Kim Young-Sam, who was sentenced to three years jail and fined US$1.5 million (New York Times, 1997).

This chapter examines how leaders can utilize a clear values framework to signal what they want their organization’s reputation to be as well as design their organization to help ensure that what happens in the organization lives up to those espoused values. Reputations are, of course, built up among both internal and external audiences, and work must be done to ensure that neither audience develops negative impressions about the organization’s reputation.

Key to this reputation development and management is consistency between espoused values and enacted values. While many organizations have espoused values, it can be difficult to embed them into the foundational practices of an organization; if they are not enacted, this can lead to direct reputational harm. Building them in fully means clearly enacting the espoused values with structures (the systems and rules), people (who is hired, supported, and excluded), and culture (the environment in which the organization operates). Values frameworks are therefore posited as the foundation upon which to build organizations which can lead to warding off potential reputational calamities in the first place, minimizing the impacts of reputational harms that do take place, and bouncing back more strongly in the wake of hits to an organization’s reputation.

This study aims to investigate the impact of brand engagement on consumer responses to brand extensions, particularly in terms of value perception, attitude and purchase intention in a masstige context. The study examines low-fit/high-functionality and high-fit/low-functionality products. It also explores the crucial role of self-congruence in enhancing brand engagement, which leads to positive consumer responses towards brand extensions.

After establishing the theoretical foundations, pre-tests identified the product types and their fit level. In this quantitative study, 464 questionnaires were administered. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling validated the model and tested the hypotheses for low-fit/high-functionality and high-fit/low-functionality products of a masstige brand.

Data analysis shows that brand engagement positively affects value perception, attitude and purchase intention. However, consumers’ responses to brand extension differed for low-fit versus high-fit products. Moreover, social self-congruence and actual and ideal self-congruence positively impact consumers’ active engagement with masstige brands.

This research shows that low-fit extensions of masstige brands can succeed with high functionality, while high-fit extensions mitigate the negative effects of low functionality, a key attribute of masstige brands. The study adds to the limited literature on self-congruence and engagement by identifying actual and ideal self-congruence as determinants of brand engagement. It is also among the first to demonstrate that social self-congruence drives brand engagement for masstige brands.

Viewing the last dying embers of 1984, the Orwel‐lian year of Big Brother and some of its not‐so‐far off the mark predictions, the unemployment which one cannot help feeling is more apparent than real, it is hardly surprising that the subject of Poverty or the so‐called Poverty arise. The real poverty of undernourished children, soup kitchens, children suffering at Christmas, hungry children ravenously consuming free school meals has not, even now, returned.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.