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Our Dublin correspondent telegraphed last night:

Purpose — Most managers seem dissatisfied with their careers after they return from expatriate assignments. The study aimed to identify the reasons for their dissatisfaction and distill implications for MNCs interested in improving the return on the investment they make on expatriation and harnessing the valuable knowledge with which many managers return after successful completion of expatriate assignments.

Methodology/approach — The data were collected via depth interviews with recently returned expatriates.

Findings — The level of dissatisfaction among returning expatriates is high and is attributable to a poorly managed HR function. While considerable sums are invested in transferring knowledge from home to host offices, MNCs seem curiously inattentive to the process by which their returning expatriates are reintegrated into the firm.

Practical implications — Managers' voices call for a strategically oriented HR function of MNCs and a new organisation for developing intellectual capital and a cadre of globally trained managers. Changes in structure, systems and processes are discussed.

Social implications — If MNCs continue neglecting the repatriation needs of their expatriates, and paying little or no attention to transferring their knowledge about international operations, U.S. companies are likely to lag in terms of utilising that knowledge to become more effective global organisations.

Originality/value of the chapter — Sources of dissatisfaction among returning expatriates are identified. Much of the dissatisfaction relates to the disconnect between expectations and reality, the failure of the mentor role and a lagging HR function. The chapter identifies steps to correct these problems.

Care for the elderly is the most pressing problem now facing Japan. For maintaining a long and healthy life, it is important to refine the self-care of people and to create a well-balanced system of support involving health care, welfare, nursing care, and medical treatment. Mutual support within each local community is also indispensable for restructuring care-minding areas. Due attention should also be paid to the ethical aspects concerning care of the elderly. This chapter attempts to reflect on the brief history of the care for the elderly in Japan.

The objective of this study was to determine whether an association between coparenting trajectories and parental commitment exists five years after the birth of focal children. Situated in commitment theory, the study used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to estimate latent growth curve models to test the relationship between coparenting trajectories and commitment theory. Results show that the coparenting trajectory decreased over the four-year period, but reports remained high. Mothers who report high levels of coparenting also report being committed to the biological father, albeit commitment is low. This finding shows that parents may be dedicated to their children and constrained by the parental dyad. These findings support the hypothesis that children are constraining the parental dyad. Further, coparenting among unmarried, cohabiting parents influence parental relationships over time–substantiating the argument that a “new package deal” exists.

Social implications – If parents feel constrained to each other due to shared children, policies directed at coparenting, rather than marriage incentives and promotion, could help parents learn to negotiate their parental duties with each other to ensure that both parents are vested in their children’s lives.

The literature on marriage formation neglects different pathways to marriage. This study focuses on arranged marriage, introduced marriage, and self-initiated marriage as three main marriage pathways in East Asia and examines how people’s marriage pathway choices are associated with education and change over time in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Using data from the East Asian Social Survey, this study finds that education is associated with fewer arranged marriages and more self-initiated marriages and that more recent marriage cohorts also witness a decline in arranged marriages and an increase in self-initiated marriages. However, how introduced marriage is associated with education and change over time varies in four East Asian societies. The findings support the “developmentalism-marriage” framework that developmental idealism leads to modern marital practices.

Purpose – Informed by Chinese mothers from four villages, the purpose of this chapter is to address the old issue of feminization of family survival, but situated within the landscape of neoliberalism. This study investigates the interplay between Chinese patriarchal values and neoliberal ideas that have shaped the Happiness Project – Action to Aid Impoverished Mothers – an official population control program that has been combined with poverty reduction “Action.”

Methodology – This research began in 2001 in Sichuan Province, Southwest China. Over a period of three years I interviewed 48 women who were participants in the Happiness Project.

Findings – The goal of the Happiness Project is to bring “happiness” to poor mothers through the introduction of microcredit, literacy programs, and the improvement of reproductive health. Three maternal aspects of the Happiness Project, as the study indicates, coincide with three particular patriarchal values. These include an official construction of a good mother image, targeting women's bodies as objects of the state's population control, and reinforcing gender stereotypes through market activity. The findings of this research suggest that feminization of family survival coincided with achieving the goal of the Project. Mothers thus have carried a double burden on behalf of the Chinese state and their families: the goals of declining fertility and increasing family prosperity.

Social implications – Based on this outcome, the study not only calls for reevaluating this “women-only” economic development model, but also calls into question whether bringing Chinese women into public production/market activity is a path to women's emancipation under neoliberalism.

In the wake of the extraordinary financial scandals that both preceded and followed the September–October Financial Crises of 2008, discussions about the executive virtues of honesty and integrity are no longer academic or esoteric, but critically urgent and challenging. As representatives of the corporation, its products and services, corporate executives in general, and production, accounting, finance, and marketing executives in particular, must be the frontline public relations and goodwill ambassadors for their firms, products, and services. As academicians of business education, we must also analyze these corporate wrongdoings as objectively and ethically as possible. What is wrong must be declared and condemned as wrong, what is right must be affirmed and acknowledged as right. We owe it to our students, our profession, our stakeholders, and to the business world. Contemporary American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) proposes the issue of morality in a threefold question: Who am I? Who ought I to become? How ought I to get there? The answer to every question refers to the virtues, especially to corporate executive virtues. This chapter explores corporate executive virtues, especially the classical cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice as defining and enhancing corporate executive life.