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As transition countries shift to a mixed welfare system, the accountability of non-government organizations (NGOs) becomes critical to quality services. Yet, poor financial and managerial practices of some NGOs in China have led to distrust from citizens. The purpose of this paper is to use a democratic accountability framework to examine citizen participation in NGOs as an approach to understand an angle of this distrust. Does the Chinese language academic literature about NGO accountability engage with concepts of participation in NGO governance, management and service use?

The method was content analysis of a search of words and concepts relating to NGOs, participation and accountability in the available Chinese language literature on NGO accountability through the newly developed search engine Wenjin Search of the National Library of China.

The analysis found that most Chinese literature only emphasizes problems of accountability, causes and regulatory solutions. When the literature includes participation, it refers to it as a platform for civil society, rather than a process of accountability within an NGO.

Searching by keywords in one search engine may not be exhaustive. The results probably reflect most of the current research of Chinese scholars, considering the depth of the search engine.

Formal NGOs are relatively new in the Chinese political landscape; and government regulations are largely administrative and unenforced. At conceptual and political levels, the absence of discussion about other forms of accountability ignores questions about public dissatisfaction with NGO performance and the public’s willingness to contribute to NGO effectiveness, and civic engagement.

An implication is that until Chinese NGO research also incorporates democratic accountability concepts, it will continue to ignore the internal and external drivers from citizens for NGO change. Transition country NGOs that encourage participation have the potential to engender greater accountability in the organization, community and in state relations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the alternative accounts produced by Green Earth Volunteers (GEV), a Chinese environmental non-governmental organisation, over a 10-year period in the context of their campaign to create visibilities about hydroelectric dam projects along the Chang Jiang.

Drawing on conceptions of the human–nature relationship, including those evident in ancient Chinese philosophy and mythology, and the Chinese way of viewing and resolving conflict, this paper offers an interpretive analysis of the alternative accounts of GEV in terms of their form and content.

In terms of their content, the alternative accounts reflect elements of interrelated thinking, being underpinned by a recognition of the relationship between humans and nature, which is evident in Confucianism, Taoism and ancient Chinese mythology. The strategies adopted by GEV are a non-confrontational but feasible way to promote their ecological beliefs in the Chinese context.

The study suggests that social and environmental accounting (SEA) in developing countries is steeped in local cultural and philosophical traditions that need to be considered and incorporated into the design of alternative accounts.

The study contributes to the very limited literature that offers qualitative analyses of SEA in developing countries.

This study examines the transformation of labour non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in Mainland China since the enactment of the 2017 Overseas NGO Management Law, which aims to regulate foreign concerns functioning outside the direct control of the state. It focuses on the extent to which these organisations have responded to the rapidly changing political and social environment by altering their goals and strategies in support of migrant workers. It also considers the relevance of Western social movement theories (SMTs) to China's grassroots labour movement in the 2020s. 

The research is based on case studies of ten labour NGOs operating in Beijing, Tianjin and Yunnan. It draws upon fifteen semi-structured interviews with the founders, leaders and activists affiliated with those organisations, as well as records and documented information of each of those organisations.

While the power and influence of labour NGOs markedly diminished, most have been able to adapt their goals and the strategies remain sustainable amidst both China's changing political and social climates and the global pandemic. It suggests that conventional SMTs can still offer valuable insights into understanding the development of labour NGOs in China, although they might not fully interpret the specific conditions and challenges faced by these organisations.

This study stands out as one of very few to offer empirical evidence on the inner workings of China's labour NGOs over the last six years. It also contributes to our understanding of social movements in a non-Western context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between Chinese traditionality (an individual-level cultural variable) and subjective career success in the Chinese context. It explores whether Chinese traditionality influences employees’ perceptions of procedural justice and job insecurity, which in turn affect their job and career satisfaction.

Data were collected via employee survey from 482 workers in three large companies in China. The HR department helped us to distribute a self-administered questionnaire to the respondents. The authors assured them of confidentiality and protected their anonymity. Path analysis was used to evaluate the relationships in the conceptual model. For testing the mediating hypotheses, the authors employed Sobel tests and bootstrapping.

The results indicate that Chinese traditionality is related to procedural justice and perceived job insecurity. The authors further found that Chinese traditionality exerts a significant effect on both job and career satisfaction, and such effects are fully mediated by procedural justice and perceived job insecurity.

Based on the findings, Chinese firms should pay attention to employees’ cultural values and their perceptions of work context, which significantly affect their job and career satisfaction. It is also important to ensure a high level of procedural justice and job security as perceived by the employees.

This study is the first exploration of the relationship between Chinese traditonality and subjective career success. It also reveals the mediating role of procedural justice and perceived job insecurity in the above relationship. The new findings add to the cross-cultural research on careers.

The paper sets out to understand the key issues that the various functions and optimal allocation of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in the circular economy that provide public services depend not only on external quantities or densities but also on their internal size of human resources.

The paper uses different data samples and models to study the influence mechanism of optimal NGO size of human resources and its differentiated effects on governance quality of entrepreneurship.

The authors find that a reduction in transaction costs and an increase in the aggregation degree of public demand lead to increased human capital and lower financial capital intensity. In addition, the authors find that NGO size of human resources has a relationship that is approximately U-shaped (or inverse U-shaped) with the governance quality of entrepreneurship.

The paper discusses the implications for programs that encourage NGOs to optimally determine their internal size of human resources and further improve the governance quality of entrepreneurship in the circular economy.

The paper reveals the significant nonmonotonic relationship between local governance quality and NGO financial size, even after controlling for other NGO, city and provincial characteristics.

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) researchers and practitioners have found that schools can play a critical role in DRR education, with many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) developing initiatives to actively involve children in DRR education programs. This paper reports on a case study on an innovative Chinese NGO school-based program focused on participatory child-centered DRR (PCC-DRR) education, from which a PCC-DRR education framework was developed so that similar programs could be replicated, especially in developing countries.

After nearly a year of research involving follow-up interviews, fieldwork and secondary data collection from annual reports, news reports and official websites, a case study was conducted on the PCC-DRR education program developed by the One Foundation (OF), a resource-rich NGO in China, that focused on its education strategies and project practice in Ya'an following the 2013 Lushan earthquake.

Based on constructivist theory, the OF developed a PCC-DRR education program that had four specific branches: teacher capacity building, child DRR education, campus risk management and campus safety culture, which was then implemented in 115 schools and consequently evaluated as being highly effective.

The innovative OF PCC-DRR education program adds to theoretical and practical DRR education research as a “best practice” case. Because the proposed framework is child-centered, participatory and collaborative, it provides excellent guidance and reference for countries seeking to develop school-based DRR education programs.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate the relationship between human resource management (HRM) competency and firm performance. Drawn upon the resource-based view and alignment theory, HRM competency is expected to be related to the adoption of high performance work systems (HPWS) and the achievement of external fit in HRM, which in turn contribute to firm performance.

The data for this study were collected via a survey of in 157 Chinese enterprises located in the high technology development zone of three large cities. Two different respondents from each firm provided information about organizational characteristics, HRM policy and practices, and firm performance. Multiple regressions were used to test the hypotheses.

Results indicate that HRM competency has a significant and positive effect on firm performance. Such an effect is found to be mediated by the achievement of external fit, but not the adoption of HPWS.

Limitations of the study include cross-sectional data, perceptual measure of firm performance, omission of external variables, and restricted sample. This study highlights the importance of HRM competency in strategic HRM, and provides evidence about how this construct is linked to firm performance.

This is the first study that explores the effect of HRM competency on the adoption of HPWS and the achievement of external fit. It further reveals that the achievement of external fit mediates the relationship between HRM competency and firm performance, and hence contributes to the HRM literature.

This study evaluated the effects of two employment practices, namely work flexibility and firm internal labor markets on affective and continuance organizational commitment. In addition, it examined whether such effects were gender‐specific. Survey data were obtained from a sample of 772 business executives in Hong Kong. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, although the two employment practices had significant and positive effects on both affective and continuance organizational commitment, they are not affected by gender.

Over the past three decades, new off-grid electrification infrastructures – as micro-grids and other solar solutions – have moved from innovative initiatives, conducted by NGOs and private stakeholders, to a credible model promoted by international organizations for electrification of rural areas in developing countries. Multiple conditions support their spread: major technological advances in the field of renewable energies (panels, batteries), intensive Chinese industrial production allowing lower prices, institutional reforms in Africa including these solutions in major national electrification programmes, and, finally, an opening to the private sector as a supposed guarantee of the projects’ viability. However, while the development of this market calls for significant investments, a vast set of calculations and a strong “micro-capitalist” doctrine, all involved in their design, experts admit that a large proportion of projects hardly survive or even fail.

This chapter investigates these failures by exploring the ecology of such infrastructures, designed for “the poor.” It discusses “thinking infrastructures” in terms of longevity by focusing on economic failures risks. The authors argue that the ecology of the infrastructure integrates various economic conversions and exchanges chains expected to participate in the infrastructure’s functioning. By following energy access solutions for rural Africa in sub-regions of Senegal and Madagascar, from their political and technical design to their ordinary life, the authors examine the tensions and contradictions embedded within the scripts of balance supposed to guarantee their success.

The chapter examines various manifestations of the concept of “social capital” in details by sorting them into three categories: individual, collective, and hybrid. Based on the examination of social capital literature, the chapter defines social capital as moral resources that lubricate cooperation among individuals for economic as well as civic reasons. Then the chapter examines social capital in contemporary urban China. The atomizing effect of market economy destroyed previous stock of social capital, but there are not corrective mechanisms to generate new social capital. Therefore urban China is experiencing the paucity of social capital.