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The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary solution to address the problem of estimating human pose and trajectory by an aerial robot with a monocular camera in near real time.

The distinguishing feature of the solution is a dynamic classifier selection architecture. Each video frame is corrected for perspective using projective transformation. Then, a silhouette is extracted as a Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG). The HOG is then classified using a dynamic classifier. A class is defined as a pose-viewpoint pair, and a total of 64 classes are defined to represent a forward walking and turning gait sequence. The dynamic classifier consists of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier C64 that recognizes all 64 classes, and 64 SVM classifiers that recognize four classes each – these four classes are chosen based on the temporal relationship between them, dictated by the gait sequence.

The solution provides three main advantages: first, classification is efficient due to dynamic selection (4-class vs 64-class classification). Second, classification errors are confined to neighbors of the true viewpoints. This means a wrongly estimated viewpoint is at most an adjacent viewpoint of the true viewpoint, enabling fast recovery from incorrect estimations. Third, the robust temporal relationship between poses is used to resolve the left-right ambiguities of human silhouettes.

Experiments conducted on both fronto-parallel videos and aerial videos confirm that the solution can achieve accurate pose and trajectory estimation for these different kinds of videos. For example, the “walking on an 8-shaped path” data set (1,652 frames) can achieve the following estimation accuracies: 85 percent for viewpoints and 98.14 percent for poses.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

Given the fact that emerging economies have idiosyncratic characteristics, international marketing strategies of emerging-market exporting firms have been firmly acknowledged to be rather peculiar compared to exporting firms based in developed countries. In this sense, it is therefore incumbent to synthesize the stream of research on international marketing strategy with a particular focus on emerging-market exporting firms. Accordingly, the main purpose of this study is to critically assess the related empirical body of research, and to build a conceptual framework for further development by drawing on the knowledge gaps identified.

To serve the research objective, this study adopts a systematic literature review methodology. In this sense, 51 articles were content-analyzed as to theoretical underpinnings, scope of research, research methodology, and empirical issues; and a comprehensive conceptual framework and research propositions were developed.

The findings of this review delineate that the pertinent literature is characterized by some contextual, methodological, and empirical weaknesses. In a nutshell, although the last decades have witnessed a burgeoning interest; the pertinent literature is still at the introductory stage and needs additional improvement.

By addressing the research gap concerning the requirement to synthesize and compile the empirical line of research on international marketing strategy of emerging-market exporting firms, this review study provides novel and valuable insights into the existing knowledge on the subject.

Purpose: Premarital cohabitation has increased dramatically in China in the last few decades. Past studies have suggested that education is positively associated with premarital cohabitation in China, but how this association changes over time when cohabitation grows from a marginal phenomenon to a popular choice remains unknown. This chapter investigates the changes in the association between education and premarital cohabitation among married individuals in post-reform China.

Design/methodology/approach: Using pooled data from the China Family Panel Studies (2010–2016), logistic regressions are carried out to compare the association between education and premarital cohabitation across three marriage cohorts: 1981–1992, 1993–2001, and 2002–2016.

Findings: Results show that opposite to trends in many Western countries, the positive association between education and premarital cohabitation has not decreased but instead strengthened over time in China. This trend is more consistent for women than men.

Research limitations/implications: The pathways through which education influences cohabitation have not been examined. Moreover, the scope of this research is limited to married individuals and does not include cohabiting experiences that do not lead to marriage. Future research may address this issue when such data become available.

Originality/value: This chapter for the first time examines how the association between education and premarital cohabitation changes over time across different marriage cohorts and whether the diffusion process has happened like what has been observed in Western countries. The findings suggest that China is developing different patterns and trends of demographic changes because of its unique institutional and cultural context.

Purpose – This chapter aims to explore the strategies used by the Hong Kong government to respond to the adult worker model and the male-breadwinner model; and to explore the views of women on the desirability of these strategies. The male-breadwinner model posits that men work full-time outside the home and women take on domestic work. The adult worker model suggests that women and men should be equally expected to participate in formal employment.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter analyses the policy measures used by the Hong Kong government to support women in their participation in formal employment and the local work-based pension scheme (the Mandatory Provident Fund) as well as other policy measures that offer potential for enabling family care providers to accumulate resources for secure retirement. Additionally, it draws on semi-structured interviews with 30 Hong Kong young women to examine their views on the extent to which the government supports them to save pension incomes.

Findings – This study shows that the Hong Kong government uses a ‘weak action strategy’ to respond to the adult worker model and the male-breadwinner model, and that this strategy fails to meet women’s diverse preferences for their roles in the labour market and the family.

Originality/value – Based on a newly developed framework, this study examines the responses made by the government to both the male-breadwinner model and the adult worker model. It sheds new insights into possible ways of assisting women to achieve secure retirement .

The purpose of this paper is to provide the historical background of genealogical records and analyze the value of Chinese genealogical research through the study of names and genealogical resources.

The paper examines the historical evolution and value of Chinese genealogical records, with the focus on researching the Islamic Chinese names used by the people living in Guilin. The highlight of this paper includes the analysis and evolution of the Islamic Chinese names commonly adopted by the local people in Guilin. It concludes with the recommendations on emphasizing and making the best use of genealogical records to enhance the research value of Chinese overseas studies.

The paper covers the history of Islam and describes how the religion was introduced into China, as well as Muslims' ethnicity and identity. It also places focus on the importance of building a research collection in Asian history and Chinese genealogy.

This research study has a strong subject focus on Chinese genealogy, Asian history, and Islamic Chinese surnames. It is a narrow field that few researchers have delved into.

The results of this study will assist students, researchers, and the general public in tracing the origin of their surnames and developing their interest in the social and historical value of Chinese local history and genealogies.

The study of Chinese surnames is, by itself, a particular field for researching the social and political implications of contemporary Chinese society during the time the family members lived.

Very little research has been done in the area of Chinese local history and genealogy. The paper would be of value to researchers such as historians, sociologists, ethnologists and archaeologists, as well as students and anyone interested in researching a surname origin, its history and evolution.

With the introduction of open door policy in 1978 and recent entrance to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), there seems to be a continuous growth of world business between China and the rest of the world. The purpose of this article is to make a comparison between Chinese professionalisation of accounting with other Western countries focusing on three professional themes: profession and the state, entry qualification to the profession and the relationship between higher education and the profession.

This study uses a qualitative method and it is based on using unstructured interviews with Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA) (Beijing office), CPA Australia (Beijing Representative Office) and National Accounting Institute (NAI) (Beijing office) – all conducted in March 2005. Further information about the current accounting development in China is collected through secondary sources.

The results show that current accounting professionalisation project in China has been derailed mainly due to lack of coordination among accounting educational institutions. It seems that the CICPA purposely exert control over the supply of accountants by limiting the membership only to those who complete its own examinations mainly to maintain the “local status” of its members.

The professional accounting project should be closely linked with China's entrance to the WTO and the World Bank initiatives on accounting development. The results indicate that the accounting profession in China has so far been failed to take appropriate measures to align the professional accounting development with that of parallel professions as found in Western countries.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether different corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions, namely, workplace economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical responsibility, philanthropic responsibility and environmental responsibility, have different influence on job pursuit intention among undergraduate students in Malaysia.

The target respondents are undergraduate business students from five leading private universities in Malaysia. Primary data were collected through survey questionnaires via face-to-face method. Five-point Likert scale was used to assess the variables and to measure the items. Collected data were tested through SAS software and analysed with descriptive and inferential analyses.

Four out of the five CSR dimensions significantly influence job pursuit intention with ethical responsibility being the exception.

This study proved that the adoption of CSR in an organisation will become a competitive advantage to attract new talents. Also, this is an improved research model by adopting multi-dimensional perspectives of CSR.

This proposed framework with a combination of five CSR dimensions (workplace economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical responsibility, philanthropic responsibility and environmental responsibility) is useful to future researchers as it enables them to have a broader view on CSR and its effect on job pursuit intention.