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This paper aims to present the design of a new service in a self‐access language centre of a university in Hong Kong. A language action literacy program is being designed to promote independent learning and to support undergraduates in developing preferred qualities, including what the Kano Model would classify as excitement qualities.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the decision support tool for selecting the literacy program contents to echo the Voice of Customer (VOC). The QFD exercises undertaken include: a telephone survey with 12 employers rating the importance of customer requirements; the program designers selecting program contents that match the customer requirements; determining the relationship between the customer requirements and the program contents; calculating the importance weighting of program contents; and determining the correlation between the program contents. The categorization of qualities by the Kano model is followed when discussing customer satisfaction.

Independent learning was rated as the most important of 20 customer requirements, and excitement qualities such as Critical thinking, Innovation, Creativity were rated as important. The QFD exercises led to the recommendations that seven types of literacy (e.g. Critical literacy, Activism & advocacy) and functional grammar should be prioritized as main program contents for empowering undergraduates to make an impact on a community or profession.

Since the sample size of the importance survey was small, the new program would have to be evaluated by larger‐scale surveys after piloting.

A review of literature found no report on QFD‐based design of self‐access language centre services; this study is likely the first of its kind.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The understanding of leaders’ network centrality in social networks has been acknowledged as a major topic that can advance the social network field; most studies in this area have either taken firms as the subject by which the network centrality of firms was measured or/and have been conducted for the functional project context. Very little research has been done in the pure project context. This paper aims to revisit the centrality–performance link in the singular specialized project context.

The proposed relationships using panel data on 48 movie directors who lead pure projects has been studied. Freeman’s (1979) and Wasserman and Faust’s (1994) procedures have been adopted to compute our three centrality measures and their effects have been examined on box-office and artistic performance. A random effect and a mixed-effects Poisson model have been fit to examine the significance of the centrality–performance relationship.

The findings provide empirical evidence to support three out of the six hypotheses. The findings suggested that degree and closeness centrality are positively related to commercial performance and betweenness centrality is negatively related to commercial performance. However, it was found that only the degree centrality is related to artistic performance.

This study has two features that distinguish it from prior studies that link centrality to performance. First, the focus is on centrality attached to the leaders instead of the centrality attached to functional project teams or firms, as previously investigated. Second, this study is the first attempt of its kind to analyse the proposed relationship for an Asian market.

Provides a review of the position of women in management in a number of countries. Describes how in almost all countries, management positions are dominated by men. Concludes that, although many similarities were found in women’s work experience across cultures, cultural factors accounted for the unique experiences of women in a given country.

This study aims to develop a strategic framework for the success of coastal urban projects in Vietnam, which is one of the Asia Pacific countries significantly affected by climate change.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from practitioners in Vietnam. Principal component analysis (PCA) technique was used to identify critical success factors (CSFs) of coastal urban projects. A strategy map for the success of coastal urban projects was also proposed using the balanced scorecard (BSC) method.

This study identified 41 project success factors that could contribute to project success, and thence, extracted 11 CSFs for coastal urban projects using the PCA technique. In addition, 11 key performance indicators (KPIs) for coastal urban projects were listed and their linking with project success factors and CSFs was explored. Furthermore, a strategy map for the success of coastal urban projects was proposed using the BSC method. The strategy map included five perspectives: learning and growth, internal processes, social and environmental performance, financial performance, and stakeholders' satisfaction.

This study identified 11 CSFs for coastal urban projects and proposed a strategy map for the success of coastal urban projects.

Previous studies have highlighted that communication barrier was one of the major safety problems faced by ethnic minority (EM) workers. This study aims to model the predominant safety communication networks of EM crews and explore the relationships among safety communication networks, individual attributes, safety climate, near misses and injuries of EM crews.

Case studies were conducted with EM crews in the Hong Kong construction industry. Demographic attribute, network, safety climate and accidents data were collected through questionnaires and analyzed by a combination of social network analysis (SNA), cross-case comparison and nonparametric tests.

The results revealed that language proficiency, network density and level of reciprocity were contributing factors of distinguishing high and low safety performing EM crews. EM management received more safety information from EM workers than local management. The centrality of EM workers was significantly related to their age, the perceived priority of safety and language ability.

The research findings regarding the impact of safety communication network characteristics on the safety performance of EM crews provides insights to employers on how to cultivate effective safety communication patterns within EM crews that can lead to better safety performance. The connections between personal attributes and their positions in safety communication networks could help the employers identify the EM workers who are positioned on edges of networks and need more attention.

This study contributes to knowledge by enriching the limited research on analyzing safety communication of small construction crews using SNA and expanding the research object to EM construction crews in the literature, who are more vulnerable to construction accidents. This research also extends the existing body of knowledge from studies mainly carried out in Western culture to Eastern culture. Although safety communication has been regarded as important for EM workers, there is a lack of quantitative analysis on this at a crew level. The present study provides empirical research to reveal authentic safety communication networks and their connections with safety performance and personal attributes.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for busy practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 424 English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2021. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and WorldCat, published in 2021 that included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, abstract or keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations summarize the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was categorized into one of seven pre-determined categories: K-12 Education, Children and Adolescents; Academic and Professional Programs; Everyday Life, Community, and the Workplace; Libraries and Health Information Literacy; Multiple Library Types; and Other Information Literacy Research and Theory.

The paper provides a brief description of 424 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy within 2021.

The purpose of this paper primarily contributes to the social enterprises and human resource management (HRM) literature by examining the roles of founders in shaping how workers in social enterprises are managed.

This paper uses a cross-case analysis of three social enterprises in the food and agricultural products and food and beverage industries in Thailand. The case study evidence in this paper draws on semi-structured interviews with each social enterprise’s founders, managers and employees; field visits to each social enterprise in Bangkok and other provinces in Thailand; and a review of archival documents and web-based reports and resources. This paper uses thematic analysis to pinpoint, examine and record the patterns or themes found in the data.

This paper proposes that the founders of social enterprises play a variety of roles in shaping the human resource (HR) systems and practices used in these enterprises. First, founders serve as role models for managers and employees of social enterprises. Second, founders serve as succession planners for social enterprises. Third, the founders serve as builders and enforcers of corporate culture in social enterprises. Finally, founders serve as builders and enforcers of the HR systems and practices used in these enterprises. Put simply, without the roles of founders, the corporate culture and HR systems and practices of social enterprises might not be sustainable over time.

Because this research is based on case studies of three social enterprises located in Thailand, the findings may not be generalizable to all other social enterprises across countries. Rather, the aim of this paper is to further the discussion regarding the roles of founders in shaping the HR systems and practices used in social enterprises. Another limitation of this research is that it does not include social enterprises in several other industries, including the entertainment and media, printing and publishing and hotel and restaurant industries. Future research may explore how the founders of social enterprises in other industries shape the HR systems and practices used in those enterprises. Moreover, quantitative studies using large samples of social enterprises across industries might also be useful in deepening the understanding of a topic that is important from the perspectives of both social enterprises and HRM.

This paper has practical implications for founders and/or top managers of social enterprises is not only Thailand but also other countries. It also has social/policy implications for the government and/or relevant public agencies in Thailand and for several other developing countries/emerging market economies.

Very little research has examined the various roles of founders in shaping how workers in social enterprises are managed. In addition, there has been relatively little research focusing on the characteristics of social enterprises’ founders in developing countries, including Thailand. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature on social enterprises and HRM regarding how the founders of small, hybrid organizations such as social enterprises in Thailand play their roles as builders and enforcers of HR systems and practices and other roles relevant to the management of workers.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.