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To discuss library services with attention to effective communication between public service professionals and East Asian library clientele.

A wide range of library literature (1984‐2001) about serving international students is reviewed to provide a portrait of efforts made by librarians and researchers. This article then focuses on East Asian students as a unique group based on shared cultural values, applies literature of East Asian/Western communication styles to library reference services, and discusses how cultural‐specific communication styles can cause misunderstandings in information delivery processes. Recommendations are made to assist information professionals in their efforts to communicate effectively with international students and meet their information needs.

Differences in communication styles can often create barriers to having messages understood correctly. As a result, the information conveyed does not necessarily reflect the intention and may even cause misunderstandings. The key to successful cross‐cultural communication is knowledge.

Further research should be conducted in addressing how cultural awareness affects effective and appropriate communication.

This paper will be helpful for public service professionals in enhancing their understanding of East Asian cultures and improving communication skills when assisting customers of East Asian backgrounds.

This paper separates East Asian students from the entire international student body, examines cultural‐specific communication styles, and explains why misunderstanding occurs when Western librarians communicating with East Asian students.

The Internet and World Wide Web offer a rapidly increasing quantity of valuable resources on Asia‐specific information. In view of the vast scope of the Asian countries and the fast proliferation of good sites, this article offers only a sampling of valuable Internet resources as starting points for further exploration. It covers meta sites, Asian search engines, library resource pages, and electronic journals and newspapers. The first part of this paper includes the Internet sites of Asian studies, the second part contains selected East Asian country resources from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and the third part presents the leading Asian electronic journals and newspapers. Preference was given to comprehensive sites on countries or regions that have been the focus of recent academic study and research. All the sources are in English and some of them contain bilingual or multilingual versions.

We present a model of how culture affects both the conceptualizations and behavioral consequences of power, focusing in particular on how culture moderates the previously demonstrated positive relationship between power and assertive action. Western cultures tend to be characterized by independence, whereas individuals in East Asian cultures tend to think of themselves as interdependent. As a result, power is conceptualized around influence and entitlement in the West, and Westerners behave assertively to satisfy oneself. In contrast, East Asians conceptualize power around responsibility and tend to consider how their behavior affects others. As a result the experience of power activates a tendency toward restraint. Therefore, power is associated with an increase in assertive action in independent cultures, whereas it leads to restraint of action in interdependent cultures. We discuss a number of moderators of this effect including the type of actions and the groups who are affected by those actions.

[Conquer with inaction] (L. C. Tsu (600 BC) Tao te ching).

This study aims to summarize the important contextual influences East Asian philosophy may have on marketing strategy and consumerism.

A qualitative approach is used to deconstruct (1) the literature on marketing as a contextual discipline, (2) East Asian philosophical underpinnings and their personal and institutional manifestations in East Asian marketing contexts, and (3) the implications for non-East Asian marketers. This essay includes a brief introduction to the manuscripts in this special issue.

Ancient philosophical wisdom shared by East Asian societies can shed light on how marketing activities and consumer behavior intertwine within East Asia and beyond. Three ancient philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism) heavily influence East Asian societies through personal and institutional-level cultural manifestations in marketing contexts.

Although the three discussed East Asian philosophical schools are not exhaustive, they lay a foundation for future discussions about how alternative marketing-related theories and frameworks may complement ones grounded in western historical and cultural contexts.

This essay initiates an overdue academic discussion about relying on non-western historical and cultural contexts to globalize the marketing discipline further.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the context of ad pictures differs between Chinese ads and US ads and whether it can influence consumers' ad attitudes.

An ad content analysis and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings suggest that contextualized ads appear more frequently in Chinese magazines because East Asians have a context‐dependent mode of thinking while westerners have a context‐independent mode of thinking. However, the effect of culture on advertising is moderated by product class (goods vs service), product category, and magazine category. Moreover, East Asians prefer contextualized ads to non‐contextualized ones, while westerners prefer non‐contextualized ads to contextualized ads. However, the effect of culture on ad attitudes may be moderated by ad involvement.

The limitations of this study stem from its being based on ad samples from China and its use of students to test ad attitudes.

The findings allow managers to better determine whether and under what conditions to use contextualized or non‐contextualized advertisements.

The study's examination of the effect of culture on the context of ad format and effect of context on persuasion in this context constitutes a unique and valuable contribution to the literature. The paper also contributes much to the literature by checking cultural differences across 17 magazine categories, compared to the vast majority of studies analyzing ad content between eastern and western cultures, which have been based on ads from only a few sources.

The purpose of this paper is to study the nature of brand emotions elicited by advertising stimuli across cultures and the process underlying such emotional experiences.

The study uses factorial between-subjects design. Random samples of the populations were solicited from the panels of an international data provider in Norway and Thailand.

This research shows that Thai consumers experience more positive socially engaging and disengaging brand emotions and fewer negative socially engaging emotions relative to Norwegian consumers. The effects of culture are mediated by consumers’ self-construal. Social advertising context increases number of positive and negative socially engaging emotions among Thai (but not among Norwegian) consumers.

The results highlight the importance of incorporating social orientation of emotions and adverting context in cross-cultural studies of brand emotions. The finding that Thai consumers (relative to Norwegian) experience higher levels of atypical for their culture – positive socially disengaging brand emotions requires further research.

The findings suggest that advertising stimuli need to be adapted to the cultural context. Marketing managers should use extensive pretesting in culturally distinct markets to make sure that advertising evokes brand emotions in line with the strategy.

Despite extensive research on brand emotions, extant studies on brand emotions across cultures are limited. This study is among the first to advance the understanding of how social orientation of emotions and advertising context underlie experience of brand emotions across cultures.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, the paper demonstrates how inter-ocular testing (looking at the data) of Schwartz values from world values study (WVS) provides a surprisingly different picture to what the authors would expect from traditional mean comparison testing (t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA)). Second, the authors suggest that the ReVaMB model can be applied to an East Asian philosophical perspective. Relativity, the authors argue, is a factor when East Asian wisdom, philosophies and ideologies (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Legalism) “drive” outcomes such as work ethic. Third, the paper serves as an editorial to a special issue in CCSM on East Asian wisdom and its impact on business culture and performance in a cross-cultural context. Common themes are Yin Yang, how different cultures deal with paradox, and Zhong Yong, with accompanying concerns of how to conceptualise and deal with balance of opposites.

The authors adopted ten variables of the Schwartz values scales used in the WVS and subjected them to principle components analysis to reduce the number of variables. The authors found a two-factor solution: one relating to personal material success and adventure and excitement; another relating to success and personal recognition. The authors labelled these factors as Altruism and Hedonism. The analysis is based on an overall sample of 84,692 respondents in 60 countries. In addition to traditional statistical testing, the authors conduct inter-ocular testing. The authors also suggest that the ReVaMB model can be applied to East Asian wisdom.

Three recommendations help to arrive at more accurate conclusions when comparing groups: the authors recommend to aspire to “consistent look and statistic”. If the data distribution does not agree with the statistics, then the researcher should take a closer look. To avoid misinterpreting statistics and other analysis, the authors recommend inter-ocular testing, i.e. eyeballing data in a scientific fashion. The authors provide specific examples how to do that. The authors recommend to test for common-language effect size (CLE), and also recommend a new rule of thumb, i.e. a split of 60/40 as minimum difference to make any generalisation; 70/30 is worth considering. The rule of thumb contributes to better differentiation between real and “not real” differences.

The authors introduce two concepts: the “inter-ocular test”, which simply means to “look at your data”, and the Chinese word, 错觉 (Cuòjué) which roughly translates to “illusion”, “wrong impression”, or “misconception”. This study argues against accepting simplistic averages for data analysis. The authors provide evidence that an inter-ocular test provides a more comprehensive picture of data when comparing groups rather than simply relying on traditional statistical mean comparison testing. The “word of caution” is to avoid premature conclusions on group comparisons with statistical testing alone. The authors also propose an extension of the original ReVaMB model from a confucian orientation to a broad East Asian philosophical perspective. Culture does determine attitudes and behaviour which in turn contribute to the shaping of cultures, depending on situation, context, location and time. The “context” for a situation to occur should be tested as moderators, for example, between East Asian wisdom (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Legalism) and behavioural or attitudinal dimensions such as work ethic.

China has become a driving force in the world economy, yet East‐West cultural differences remain a problem area for many managers. This paper examines the importance of Confucianism in shaping societal values in China and how these values have affected the Chinese style of management. Confucian principles are extracted from the extant literature and used to explain the cultural underpinnings of Chinese leadership patterns, interpersonal behaviors and individual values. The longevity of Confucian influences throughout Chinese culture is a major factor in China’s resistance to Western management practices. There is also evidence that mainstream Confucian principles emphasizing teamwork, relationships and strong corporate cultures are gaining traction in the West. Future Western researchers should pay increased attention to East Asian philosophies and Asian‐based religions in their attempts to understand non‐Christian lifestyles and management methods.

There is a notable dearth of interventions that have been specifically designed for Asian English Language Learner (ELL) students, and the existing research on ELL students often lacks population validity and sample diversity. In response to this need, this paper aims to review current research on literacy interventions for East/Southeast Asian ELLs and provide practical recommendations for educators teaching literacy skills to this population.

To identify studies for inclusion in this review, a systematic literature search was conducted of peer-reviewed studies and dissertations were published between 2001 and 2016. Articles were included in the authors’ review, if those described a literacy intervention where the sample was entirely East and/or Southeast Asian ELLs, or, if the sample included other groups, the study provided an analysis of the intervention’s effectiveness specifically for the East or Southeast Asian ELLs in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative studies were included.

The authors’ search yielded seven studies. The authors found three main contributors to effective literacy instruction for this population: culturally relevant instruction, family involvement and encouraging first language (L1) development to facilitate language and literacy in English. Results indicated that interventions that consider a student’s cultural style (i.e. preference toward a teacher-centered classroom) or included cultural familiar themes/texts were found to be more effective. In addition, strategies that encouraged the development of L1, such as the use of dual-language books, explicitly teaching contrastive analysis and providing the same book to be read at home and a school were all correlated with greater literacy gains. Finally, facilitating home-school communication seemed to contribute to the efficacy of several of the interventions.

This paper reveals the need to expand the current knowledge base on effective literacy instruction and intervention for East/Southeast Asian ELL students, especially research on population validity, given the specific needs of this growing population. This review is limited by the small number of relevant studies and the fact that not all East/Southeast Asian languages or ethnic groups were represented. There is still a great need for future research to determine what methods or combination of factors are effective with East/Southeast Asian ELLs of various ages and needs.

The findings from this paper have generated practical recommendations for educators teaching literacy skills to East/Southeast Asian ELL students, such as: tailor literacy instruction to be culturally relevant, design interventions around student’s preferred learning style, encourage parent/family involvement, provide bilingual instruction and bilingual reading materials and provide parents with books and information about the literacy curriculum.

This paper also reveals the need to expand the current knowledge base on effective literacy instruction and intervention for East/Southeast Asian ELL students, especially research on population validity, given the specific needs of this growing population.

Based on an extensive literature search, this is the first paper to review and summarize the research on literacy interventions for East/Southeast Asian ELLs over the past 15 years. This paper provides valuable recommendations to educators and calls for more research on English literacy acquisition specific to this population.