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National identification among young people and the issues about how national education should be conducted have been the significant topics when the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was entering its third decade of the establishment. This paper was written based on data the authors obtained upon participation in a project organized by the Centre for Catholic Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The project was carried out after the official curriculum, known as the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide, was shelved due to popular resentment. The project aimed at capturing the timely opportunity for substantial resources available for school-based operation of moral and national education and developing an alternative curriculum about teaching national issues and identification for Catholic Diocese and Convent primary schools to adopt. This paper aims to investigate the nature of this Catholic Project and examines the extent to which it is a counterhegemonic project or one for teaching to belong to a nation (Mathews, Ma and Lui, 2007). It assesses the project’s possible contribution to citizenship and national education in Hong Kong, since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide.

The authors of this paper worked in an education university of Hong Kong and were invited to be team members of this Catholic Project. The role comprised proposing topics for teacher training, conducting seminars, giving comments to teaching resources, observing and giving feedback to schools that tried out the teaching and designing/implementing an evaluative survey and conducting follow-up interviews with involved parties such as teachers and key officials of the Catholic Centre. Given this, the research involved can be perceived as action research. This paper was written up with both the qualitative and quantitative data the authors collected when working the project.

This paper reported a Catholic citizenship training project with the focus on a Catholic school project on preparing students to understand the nation by learning national issues analytically. The ultimate goal was to ensure teachers in Catholic primary schools could lead the students to examine national issues and other social issues from the perspective of Catholic social ethics. Though the project arose after the failure of the government to force through its controversial national education programme, this paper found that instead of being an alternative curriculum with resistance flavour, the project was basically a self-perfection programme for the Catholic. It was to fill a shortfall observed of Catholic schools, namely, not doing enough to let students examine social and national issues with Catholic social ethics, which, indeed, had a good interface with many cherished universal values. In the final analysis, the project is not a typical national education programme, which teaches students to belong to a nation but an innovative alternative curriculum transcending the hegemony-resistance ideological tensions as advanced by western literature (for example, Gramsci, 1971; Freire, 1970; and Apple, 1993).

The paper contributes to the literature of Hong Kong studies and citizenship education studies. The results of such an innovative endeavour, which captures and capitalizes the opportunity and resources for developing a national education curriculum in school-based manner. Attention was paid to the endeavour’s nature and its possible contribution to the knowledge, policies and practices of citizenship and national education in Hong Kong amidst deep social transformations. In particular, the paper can add to the specific literature about Hong Kong’s citizenship and national education development since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide. Using an empirical example of Asian schooling and society, analysis of this paper illustrates the way in which development of an alternative curriculum is more innovative and interesting, transcending the hegemony-resistance ideological tensions.

The Franciscan Friar Luca Pacioli is considered the “father of accounting” because of his 1494 publication Summa de Arithmetrica, Geometrica, Proportioni et Proportionalita (Summa) which included a section double entry accounting. While accounting systems existed before Pacioli, he introduced double entry accounting as a more efficient means of keeping business records because that would lead to better business operation and profits. Subsequently, double entry accounting systems have contributed significantly to the rise of capitalism in Europe and the developed world.

Pacioli also advocated a moral and social role for accounting, business, and the successful business person whose actions help serve the public interest. This clearly indicated that Pacioli understood business was about more than bookkeeping and profitability.

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has played a significant role in business ethics for at least a century. Starting with Rerum Novarum, 1891 and continuing through numerous Papal Encyclicals (e.g., Caritas in Veritate, 2009; Centesimus Annus, 1991), CST has carefully examined how businesspeople, labor, and capital can cooperate to build a more just and peaceful society that fulfills the entire person. CST thus predates and contributes to contemporary business ethics efforts.

Pacioli’s contributions reflect and underlay much of contemporary CST, which is why we believe it is important to examine his social responsibility teaching in the context of contemporary CST principles. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss Pacioli’s view of the moral roles of accounting, business, and businesspeople in the context of CST principles, particularly (1) purpose of accounting profits, (2) purpose of business in society, (3) ethical and efficient business practices as they relate to accounting, and (4) the undivided life.

In the US minimum wages were initially enacted by individual states, beginning with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1912. These laws were modeled on legislation enacted over the previous two decades in Australia, New Zealand, and England (Fisher, 1926, chap. 8; Hammond, 1915, 1913; Hobson, 1915; Hart, 1994, chaps. 2 & 3; Morris, 1986). From 1912 to 1923, the legislatures of 16 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia passed minimum wage legislation, although not all of them were operational by the end of this period (Brandeis, 1935, p. 501; Clark, 1921; Millis & Montgomery, 1938, chap. 6; Morris, 1930, chap. 1).

Review essay on Finn, D. K. (Ed.). (2010). The true wealth of nations. Catholic social thought and economic life. Oxford/New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

It says something of the current state of public discourse that the inclusion of a paper on the social teachings of an organized religion as part of a Conference on Ethico‐Economics must be explained. Theology and Religion, once at the center of any discourse on public policy, has become marginalized in such discussions. There are those who associate the decline of theology with the era of the Cold War. That conclusion is at least debatable. “Economic Man”, in the context of the post‐war period, was very much a social being for whom government and public institutions, a pro‐Keynesian economics, were essential allies. Adam Smith, accepted as the founder of classical Economics, wrote his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, when he was Professor of Moral Philosophy. Smith's concept of markets was framed as a social and ethical instrument. The Reagan and Thatcher regimes did succeed in undermining economic policy as a social instrument to the extent that most industrial nations and the important international organizations now give pre‐eminence to the balanced budget as the vehicle for corporate interests. The elimination of deficits and the efficacy of financial markets are seen in some quarters not only as ends in themselves but also as means to facilitate each other. The critics of these policies are presently weak and unpopular but they are not silent. This disparate group between them embrace a range of social, cultural, and ethical values. They seek to establish that some ends and some means must be rejected as being ethically unacceptable. It is this context that this paper seeks to position the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

Poses the question whether, on an academic level, human resource management (HRM) is a scientific discipline of management. To arrive at an answer, brings together findings of a survey concerning the foundations of HRM then links them by four central hypotheses. The first (rather speculative) hypothesis claims that, in Germany at least, the discussion of HRM problems over the last 30 years has been selective and influenced by different and changing paradigms of HRM. The second hypothesis is that nearly all formulations of HRM concepts have to be embedded in a national context. The third hypothesis states that even given the restricting effect of hypotheses one and two, a theory pitfall exists preventing any theoretical foundation of effective HRM and forcing us to construct intelligent, but untested, HRM hypotheses. The fourth hypothesis links the problems of these untested hypotheses with the problem of ethical norms for HRM in theory and practice. The final judgement is that the high theoretical requirements of HRM as an academic discipline cannot be fulfilled.

Explores the possibility and probability of a Catholic‐Evangelical alliance within the US social arena. Notes the numerical strength and systemic importance of each tradition. Examines the histories, tenets, politics, economic teachings and lifestyles of the two respective orientations. Cites their legacy of mutual hostility as well as the more recent ecumenical ventures. Focuses on the relevancy of the Vatican II Council to their dialogue and enumerates their contemporary differences and similarities. Concludes optimistically that theology and politics have forged stranger coalitions.

The Thai–Burma refugee program of Australian Catholic University (ACU) brings young Burmese refugees from camps in Thailand to an internet-equipped teaching center to study for a Diploma in Liberal Studies. Some of the learning is carried out online and some in face-to-face mode provided by ACU or partner universities.

The authors detail the methodologies followed, combining sound pedagogy with an integral human development approach. This changed the students’ mode of learning from rote to critical thinking which, in turn, improved their self-confidence, gave them a good ethical and culturally acceptable grounding and provided them with fluency in oral and written academic English. In addition, the authors recount the many challenges faced by bringing together students from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds with all the baggage brought from a conflict ridden and divided country emerging out of decades of dictatorship.

The program’s results have been remarkable. Many students have found high-quality employment after graduating, especially with non-governmental organizations on the border or in Burma or in some other job serving the needs of their own people. Others have used the Diploma to go on to full degree courses in a number of countries in Asia, North America, and Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to show a practical case of dialogic web‐based learning that has provided a set of questions analysing two complex technological projects in “southern” countries with effects on multicultural equity.

Structured online review processes in multicultural and systems science curricula allow for high density of literature‐based reflection and analysis.

The entirety of the set of over 50 questions developed by the proposed web‐based dialogic procedure represents a starting point for an in‐depth assessment of the effects of deploying “northern” technology in “southern” countries.

The present case study concentrates on energy technology, notably on two hydroelectric plants presently under construction in Ilısu, Turkey, and Belo Monte, Brazil.

The multitude of questions calls for complex technological construction projects that have to undertake sound interdisciplinary in‐depth analysis of technological, environmental, economic, cultural and social consequences in order to secure a necessary level of economic, environmental and social sustainability.

Application of widely accepted planning tools such as technology assessment, environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment are useful but have to be complemented by analogous tools at a cultural and social level.

This case study operates through questioning, largely in the Socratic tradition. Questions may trigger a broad discussion process within civil societies – which is the intention of the present text.