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The purpose of this study is to build a database of digital Chinese painting images and use the proposed technique to extract image and texture information, and search images similar to the query image based on colour histogram and texture features in the database. Thus, retrieving images by this image technique is expected to make the retrieval of Chinese painting images more precise and convenient for users.

In this study, a technique is proposed that considers spatial information of colours in addition to texture feature in image retrieval. This technique can be applied to retrieval of Chinese painting images. A database of 1,200 digital Chinese painting images in three categories was built, including landscape, flower and figure. The authors develop an image-retrieval technique that considers colour distribution, spatial information of colours and texture.

In this study, a database of 1,200 digital Chinese painting images in three categories was built, including landscape, flower and figure. An image-retrieval technique was developed that considers colour distribution, spatial information of colours and texture. Through adjustment of feature values, this technique is able to process both landscape and portrait images. This technique also addresses liubai (i.e. blank) and text problems in the images. The experimental results confirm high precision rate of the proposed retrieval technique.

In this paper, a novel Chinese painting image-retrieval technique is proposed. Existing image-retrieval techniques and the features of Chinese painting are used to retrieve Chinese painting images. The proposed technique can exclude less important image information in Chinese painting images for instance liubai and calligraphy while calculating the feature values in them. The experimental results confirm that the proposed technique delivers a retrieval precision rate as high as 92 per cent and does not require a considerable computing power for feature extraction. This technique can be applied to Web page image retrieval or to other mobile applications.

As the rise in expenditures will be even faster when the baby-boom generation soon reaches healthcare-dependent ages, healthcare providers are facing cost management decision of achieving superior performance. Taiwan provides a unique environment that the dialysis service providers face only one medical buyer. The purpose of this paper is to discuss cost factors of dialysis facilities.

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of factors influencing the dialysis costs using the data collected from a large renal clinic chain at Taiwan. The multiple linear regression analysis is employed to examine the factors influencing dialysis costs. The research sample composed of 1,255 patients is collected from 16 dialysis centers in Taiwan.

The results indicate that the treatment costs of dialysis are influenced by managerial factors including capacity utilization rate (CUR), the percentage of shares held by the owners and the geographical location of clinics (LC). The findings assist renal clinics to identify the parts critical to the cost control. Our results indicate that medical variable costs for performing the dialysis treatments are significantly influenced by such managerial factors as CUR, the percentage of owners’ shares holding and LC.

By identifying a comprehensive set of costs drivers for dialysis services, this study provides useful information for both health providers and policy makers. In specific, the result assists these providers to consider the utilization of better mechanisms/instruments to control costs by increasing the operational efficiency and achieving the economies of scale.

This paper contributes to exploring costs drivers that are generally absent from the extant literature. The result suggests that the regulators should be aware that the dialysis providers may reject costly patients. Hence, to establish the appropriate monitoring mechanisms to prevent such incidence is important. Finally, many other countries in addition to Taiwan also have a similar practice as national health insurances or services (e.g. Medicare in the USA or National Health Service in the UK). Those health systems may all face a similar cost control issues for handling end-stage renal disease patients. The analysis can help health systems worldwide to better design the reimbursement rates to account for the differences existed in dealing with the dialysis treatment costs.

Many studies have integrated the mechanism of Creative Commons (CC) or similar mechanisms into web 2.0 platforms for supporting learning. The CC mechanism may create new types of knowledge sharing environments. The purpose of this paper is to explore students’ trust, knowledge sharing self-efficacy, and outcome expectations in the context of a knowledge sharing platform using the CC mechanism.

The participants were 86 sixth-grade Taiwanese students. Within the context of online drawing and storytelling activities, a quantitatively self-reported instrument was adopted to assess the sharing experience with the CC mechanism.

The results found complex interrelationships among trust, sharing self-efficacy, and outcome expectations identified in the literature. The results further reveal that students who showed high community-related outcome expectations would adopt the non-CC approach (read-only, i.e. the shared works can not be used and modified) as they possessed lower identification-based trust. In contrast, those who adopted CC approach (i.e. the shared works are able to be used and modified) placed higher level of economy-based trust and showed a lower level of community-related outcome expectations. The results reflect that students who have low performance expectancy and sharing self-efficacy are more willing to share their work using the CC approach.

The results of this paper show that in such a mechanism there exists close interplay between trust, sharing self-efficacy, and outcome expectations. It is therefore, suggested that researchers and educators should note the influence of the sharing mechanism on the sharing activity when knowledge sharing is involved in pedagogical design. The implications derived from the findings for educational practice were also discussed.

The economic development of Taiwan, from a poor island colony to a world leader in electronic hardware manufacturing, has been spectacular. This study shows that the success of Taiwan may be largely attributed to the synergistic combination of two separate factors: (1) the utilization of unique social capital inherent in the Chinese family entrepreneurs, and (2) the institutional support from the government and other entities, such as Technology Parks, for the creation of scientific and technical knowledge and, most important, for the diffusion and exploitation of technology-based opportunities by these family businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure for identifying a corporate social responsibility (CSR) model with best goodness‐of‐fit. This research constructed a model of which CSR was mainly influenced by four core components: accountability, transparency, competitiveness, and responsibility.

The data presented in this study were collected from companies in the year 2009 in Taiwan using questionnaires, and in total 185 companies were analyzed. Structural equation modeling was applied to assess the proposed CSR model containing four latent factors and 13 observation indicators.

The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the correlation among four latent variables was significant, and the second‐order factor structure fit the observed data well.

The result supported the proposed model that four constructs played a dominant role toward CSR. Business leaders therefore could have clearer perspectives while facing challenges regarding CSR issues.

The paper shows that while developing business strategies, companies taking accountability and transparency as priority would strengthen their competitiveness and generate responsibility and in turn lead to CSR. Companies would obtain great advantages in the long run.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the causal relationships among four components in corporate social responsibility (CSR) domain. This study posits that CSR is mainly influenced by: accountability, responsibility, transparency, and competitiveness.

A path analysis is employed to determine the relationships, while confirmatory factor analysis is applied to assess the construct validity of the model. The data presented in this study were collected from Taiwanese companies in the year 2009 using questionnaires. A total of 170 companies were analyzed.

The results show that both accountability and transparency provide statistically significant contributions to the prediction of competitiveness, which in turn has a significant effect on responsibility.

First, the paper encompasses four core factors influencing the measurement of CSR. Second, the sample size used to analyze the diversity of concepts may appear small and therefore the result may not be considered precise since the total number of companies in Taiwan is over one million. Large sample size may lead to different results and therefore needs to be further explored. Third, while the proposed model was only tested in Taiwan, a country with 97.8 percent SMEs, the outcome of the research may only be applicable to Taiwan rather than to other countries with different national systems of business‐society relations. Finally, this study only investigated the relationships among core components of CSR.

While developing business strategies, companies taking accountability and transparency as priority will strengthen their competitiveness and in turn generate responsibility and lead to CSR, a way to reach corporate sustainability.

The results provide business leaders with practical advice that implementing CSR is not only the smart and right thing to do from a business perspective, but also the right thing to do from a society perspective.

Applying for international standards could be a feasible and optimal way to show commitments to CSR implementation.