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Discusses the external supply for industries of particular skill groups from academic institutions and illustrates this with a case of industrial management. Essentially, students graduating from academic institutions constitute the major portion of the labour market, and the required courses taught in schools represent the training of students. Takes into consideration three education levels ‐ junior college, college, and graduate school ‐ and classifies the training into six categories: basic knowledge, production, finance, marketing, human resources, and information. Suggests that the discrepancies between the quantities demanded by industries and supplied from schools, and the training expected by industries and received from schools provide useful information for both government and industries when making appropriate decisions.

Analysis of manpower demand is important not only at corporate level for corporate planning in human resource, but also at industry level for policy making in higher education. In this paper a regression model is built to estimate the industrial management (IM) manpower demanded by the manufacturing industries in Taiwan by using the reliable data of large firms. In forecasting, the manpower needed by individual firms of different sizes as well as by the whole industry for three education levels, namely, junior college, university and graduate school are estimated. The skill requirements of the IM employees as viewed by the industries are investigated. A three‐factor analysis of variance is conducted to detect differences among the disciplines, industries, and education levels. The results provide some explanation for the economic development of Taiwan. Since the methodology of this paper is very generic, it is readily applicable to other professions in other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a mechanism for partner selection via adapting relative weights of criteria according to the priority of motivations for establishing strategic alliance.

The analytic network process (ANP) approach derived from the idea of the Markov chain is employed to deal with this dynamic situation and to establish a partner selection mechanism. With this approach, the priority of motivations and the relative importance of criteria are determined simultaneously.

Although choosing an appropriate partner is an important variable influencing success of alliance, attempts to identify a universal list of criteria and their corresponding relative importance which enterprises should employ when seeking a proper partner would be futile since the objectives of forging alliances vary depending on specific motivations. Based on this iterative review approach proposed in this paper, a proper weight setting for these criteria is available and will comply with the original motivation for establishing the strategic alliance. This is essential for selecting an appropriate partner for establishing an alliance that matches the original motivation.

The limitation of this research is the neglect of the possible inner dependence among criteria and sub‐criteria, although that can be coped with by choosing them properly.

The content of motivations and criteria as well as their priority and weightings may vary with different kinds of alliances or situations. The partner evaluation and selection mechanism proposed in this paper can meet different situations by adapting the relative weights of criteria and attributes according to the relationship between the criteria and motivations for every particular situation, thus enabling decision‐makers to think more comprehensively before conducting a selection process. If the priority of the motivations obtained from the mechanism is consistent with that set initially, the relative weights of these criteria can then be employed to evaluate the candidate partners in the selection mechanism. If it is not, the decision maker should reconsider the weighting process or measure again the relative weights for the criteria before conducting the evaluation and selection processes to avoid selecting an inappropriate partner that runs contrary to the original motivations.

The emphasis is on the interdependence between motivations and criteria for partner selection. This paper systematically deals with the interdependence of these two factors. Based on this iterative review approach proposed in this paper, a proper weight setting for these criteria is available and will comply with the original motivation for establishing the strategic alliance.

One of the major purposes of implementing vocational education is to offer trained manpower to enterprises that meet the immense challenges of the global economic competition and unprecedented technological changes. Selecting an adequate enterprise, from the school's viewpoint, is a critical factor for implementing the vocational education system. This paper suggests applying the ANP approach in order to deal with the interdependence among criteria of different layers of the analysis process to select the suitable partner enterprise where students can gain experience. The paper describes the cooperation patterns between schools and enterprises as well as the criteria which should be considered and the corresponding attributes used to evaluate the potential enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions and satisfaction between police officers and citizens on Kinmen Island (of Taiwan), using an analytical framework that combines five primary dimensions and 25 corresponding determinants.

It considers recent developments in the application of performance measures and management to public and, particularly, police services. It goes on to assess comparative rural police performance which suggests that the application of targets could ultimately serve to provide the overall satisfaction with police services.

The findings of the study suggest that perceptions and satisfaction of both citizens and police staff may result in the success of the policing management, and that police managers have to satisfy their citizens with a high level of service quality based on different localities.

From managerial perspectives, police managers should consider both the service quality and customer satisfaction constructs as determinants of behavioural intentions, based on the fact that satisfaction can be a strategic key to maintain long term relationship with citizens as it is found of significant impact on the intentional behaviour.

This research adds empirical support to this vein of literature and has identified the five main dimensions and the 25 sub-dimensions as important constructs for police service quality.

This research outlines the Hong Kong film industry with examination of key actors, directors, films, and production companies within the martial arts genre of Hong Kong Action Cinema. Hong Kong Film Award winners and nominees, core films within genres, and core reference works both general and theoretical from experts in the field of Hong Kong martial arts film research have been highlighted. Web sites are suggested that provide reviews of Hong Kong martial arts films, biographical information on a variety of actors and actresses as well as comprehensive bibliographic information on select films. Also included are commercial Web sites that provide Hong Kong martial arts films.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the fuzzy reliability of the compressor house unit (CHU) system in a coal fired thermal power plant under vague environment by reducing the accumulating phenomenon of fuzziness and accelerating the computation process. This paper uses different fuzzy membership functions to quantify uncertainty and access the system reliability in terms of different fuzzy reliability indices having symmetric shapes.

This study analyses the fuzzy reliability of the CHU system in a coal fired thermal power plant using T_ω-based generalized fuzzy Lambda-Tau (TBGFLT) technique. This approach applies fault tree, Lambda-Tau method, different fuzzy membership functions and α-cut coupled T_ω-based approximate arithmetic operations to compute various reliability parameters (such as failure rate, repair time, mean time between failures, expected number of failures, availability and reliability) of the system. The effectiveness of TBGFLT technique has been demonstrated by comparing the results with results obtained from four different existing techniques. Moreover, this paper applies the extended Tanaka et al. (1983) approach to rank the critical components of the system when different membership functions are used.

The adopted TBGFLT technique in the present study improves the shortcomings of the existing approaches by reducing the accumulating phenomenon of fuzziness, accelerating the computation process and getting symmetric shapes for computed reliability parameters when different membership functions are used to quantify data uncertainty.

In existing fuzzy reliability techniques which are developed for repairable systems either triangular fuzzy numbers, triangle vague sets or triangle intuitionistic fuzzy sets have been used for quantifying uncertainty. These approaches do not examine the systems for components with different membership functions. The present study is an effort in this direction and evaluates the fuzzy reliability of the CHU system in a coal fired thermal power plant for components with different membership functions. This is the main contribution of the paper.

This paper aims to highlight key challenges to the rule of law in Hong Kong.

This study deploys a historical and legal approach to explore the key challenges to the rule of law in Hong Kong. In particular, this paper analyzes legal conflicts in Hong Kong.

The findings show how the rule of law in Hong Kong has become a prominent battlefield of a constitutional struggle between Hong Kong Law and Chinese Law.

This paper hypothesizes that the conflicts arise from the different interpretations and conceptualizations of the rule of law between China and Hong Kong.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

The purpose of the present study is to examine how local consumers disassociate themselves from migrants' acculturative practices and negotiate their identity through the symbolic consumption of fashion.

Data for this interpretive study were obtained via phenomenological interviews with locally-born Chinese youth in Guangzhou, China, to examine their acculturative consumption practices as well as their subjective experiences of perceived threats to their lifestyle imposed by the influx of outsiders. Snowballing and purposive sampling methods were adopted in recruiting the research participants.

Data analyses revealed that local consumers adopt three dissociative strategies (stigmatization, avoidance and self-assertion) in order to ascribe meanings to their fashion consumption practices as a means of resolving identity conflicts and differentiate themselves from the migrant consumers.

This research offers a single perspective (i.e. that of local-born young consumers residing in Guangzhou) on the locals' attitudes aimed at distinguishing and negotiating their identities in an intercultural setting via specific fashion-clothing choices. This research has theoretical implications for the consumer acculturation theory and identity negotiation.

Findings yielded by the present study have important implications for commercial companies focusing on fashion consumption, in particular for marketing practices aimed at rural-urban identification and youth market segmentation.

This study contributes to the existing discussion on consumer acculturation by offering an intracultural perspective to the understanding of local consumers' responses to migrants' acculturation. It also provides managerial insights for fashion retailers, prompting them to rethink their market segmentation strategies to address population mobility in the marketplace and better understand how it alters the in-between social relationships that result in different consumption patterns and practices.

This study contributes to the existing discussion on youth consumer acculturation theories by offering an intercultural perspective to the understanding of local consumers' responses to migrants' acculturation attempts. It also offers managerial insights for fashion retailers, prompting them to rethink their market segmentation strategies to address population mobility and better understand how it alters the social relationships that result in different consumption patterns and practices.