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Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to improve faculty and institutional development and to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions to enhance faculty and institutional development. This chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where lifelong and lifewide learning is cultivated and where self-directed learning is nurtured. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL helps cultivate a learning environment that is more meaningful, responsive, integrated, and purposeful.

Many believe we are suffering from an ethics crisis (Perry & Nixon, 2005). The increased incidence of irresponsible behaviour by business, recent examples being the global financial crisis and the BP oil spill, and the devastating consequences on society have focused attention on the role business schools play in educating future business (and other) leaders. There have also been criticisms of business schools failing to take into account the ‘factually impossible notion of unlimited growth in a world of limited resources’ (Giacalone & Thompson, 2006), and continuing to encourage business strategies which are at odds with the growing challenge of sustainable development, which include issues of climate change, inequity and resource depletion (Giacalone & Thompson, 2006; Shrivastava, 1995; Waddock, 2007). Indeed, business schools have been criticised for encouraging a self-interested, profit-oriented focus that ignores the wider responsibilities of business to society (Gioia, 1992; Kochan, 2002; Mitroff, 2004). Starkey, Hatchuel, and Tempest (2004), for example, claim that the business school has become “ethically compromised because the values it espouses have been implicated in recent corporate scandals.” McPhail (2001) suggests the inclusion of business ethics into accounting and business education as a possible remedy. Cant and Kulik went further and claimed that “business schools would be remiss, if not unethical themselves, if their ethics education efforts were not increased in light of recent events.” (2009).