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This paper aims to evaluate the relation between acquisition premiums and amounts recognised as identifiable intangible assets (IIAs) in business combination, in periods before and after transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

This is an empirical archival research using data from business acquisitions.

In the pre-IFRS period, there is evidence of firms recognising IIAs in business combinations having higher acquisition premiums. This association of acquisition premiums and IIAs ceased with transition to IFRS, notwithstanding the relative latitude provided in accounting standards for the recognition of IIAs.

This paper complements the study by Su and Wells (2015) which founds little association between IIAs and performance subsequent to business acquisitions prior to transition to IFRS. The results here suggest that it is attributable to overpayment. Problematically, the incentives for opportunism remain and an issue requiring address is whether alternative sources of accounting flexibility in relation to business combinations exist, such as goodwill which is no longer subject to mandatory amortisation.

The results are consistent with accounting opportunism and suggest “overpayment” and accounting flexibility having an economic consequence. This would be expected to result in asset impairments in subsequent periods; however, there is little evidence of this occurring.

These results have relevance for regulators concerned with the operation of regulation relating to business acquisitions (AASB 3) and intangible assets (AASB 138).

This paper complements a number of papers concerned with the recognition of IIAs in business combinations and confirms what many researchers in the area typically assume (triangulation).

This paper aims to report findings of up-to-date insights to fill the knowledge gap of lack of theoretical and practical understandings of how knowledge is used in medium-sized enterprises (MEs) for ensuring their performance excellence, healthy survival and growth, particularly using the contextual background of quality improvement as the standing point to concretise the research content and research participants’ mind-set for data collection.

The empirical data were attained by conducting first a multiple-case study and thereafter a structured interview. Insights were obtained through analysing the collected data and triangulating the findings with the contention from the extant literature where available.

A set of approaches for effective quality improvement knowledge (QIK) utilisation in MEs have been identified and attested, as well as prioritised for a clear guidance on their application by practical businesses.

As a pioneering study on the particularly focussed issue, namely, a current knowledge gap – QIK utilisation in MEs, theoretically the research contributes to the enrichment of the current KM and QI literature with a primary focus on knowledge utilisation in MEs. Practically its findings provide insightful guidance to practice on the approaches of QIK utilisation.

In this study, the Incoloy 825 alloy was hot-forged 90% by open die forging, and the Rockwell hardness was measured by change of solution treatment temperature and aging time. The Rockwell hardness was analyzed by the Weibull statistics.

The hot forging process generally involved heating to 1,423 K, to make grain size smaller than required grain size of 50 µm of the Incoloy 825 alloy. Thereafter, after a certain time, a forging ratio of 90% was obtained with a 5,000 ton press. At this time, the finish forging temperature was 1,173 K. To investigate the effect of solution treatment temperature, the material was maintained at 973, 1,073, 1,173 and 1,273 K for 1 h and then water-cooled. To investigate the effect of aging time, the material was water-cooled after holding for 1, 5, 10 and 30 h at 973 K.

The amount of precipitate increased with aging time, and the size of precipitate became larger. The lower the solution treatment temperature, the longer the aging time, and the Rockwell hardness increased. Shape parameter of solution-treated material increased with increasing temperature, but decreased sharply at 1,273 K. The scale parameter decreased. Shape parameters and the scale parameters of the aging treatment material increased, according to increasing of aging time.

The effect of heat treatment on microstructure and Rockwell hardness, in Incoloy 825 alloy with hot forging of 90% grain size increased and precipitates decreased with increasing solution treatment temperature, precipitate increased and precipitates' size increased with increasing aging time at 973 K. Shape parameter increased but scale parameter decreased. Shape parameters and scale parameters of the aging-treated material increased.

This chapter applies the five drivers of productivity framework to regional microdata for Egypt and extends it by introducing an index of industrial clusters as an explanatory factor of the productivity performance of local private sector firms. Applying structural equation models, the geographic concentration of sectoral economic activity is found to have a positive and statistically significant effect on labor productivity. The transmission mechanism is conjectured to be the positive spillovers that are created, which local firms can tap into. In contrast, a higher concentration of skilled workers in an industrial sector in a region is associated with lower levels of labor productivity – a finding that suggests there may be structural deficiencies in the allocation of skilled workers. Regional policy should focus on net investments in gross capital formation throughout the country, for which the national and regional governments should improve how public investments are managed and the institutional framework – including the rule of law, bureaucracy and red tape, conflict of interest, transparency, and governance – so that private investment (both local and foreign) may substantially increase.

Grounding our research in the conservation of resources (COR) theory and the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, this study addresses the research gap of examining the relationship between meaningful work and dimensions of job burnout with work engagement as the mediator, especially in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also attempts to understand if age plays a role in moderating the effect of these relationships.

This study collected data using a questionnaire protocol that was adapted and refined from the original scales in existing studies. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze data collected from 530 social workers working in New Zealand nonprofit organizations (NPO).

Results indicated that meaningful work only addressed one dimension of job burnout. Work engagement was found to have mediating effects on the relationships between meaningful work and all the dimensions of job burnout. Age does not have any moderating effect on these relationships.

This study addresses the lack of literature that collectively examines the constructs of meaningful work, dimensions of job burnout and work engagement in the same model. In doing so, this study provides a unique verification of job burnout as a multidimensional construct. At the same time, this study offers insights into the effect of these constructs in NPOs, unraveling the complexities that drive these NPOs' human resources (HR) processes.

This paper aims to examine the strategic role of world-class universities and the international academic profession in the regionalisation project of China’s Greater Bay Area (GBA). It illustrates the way in which the case of the GBA regionalisation project offers a potentially rich empirical example for adding contextual understanding to the literature of the Triple Helix model, which largely draws on inductive theorising from western successful innovation cases. The GBA regionalisation processes will provide a wealth of empirical cases for identifying circumstances that address tensions and increase interactions in the Triple Helix relationship of university, government and industry for fostering knowledge synergies.

Focusing on the case of Hong Kong, it engages in policy and stakeholder analysis and addresses three key research questions: What are the competitive advantages and potential strategic role of Hong Kong's universities and academic profession in the regionalisation of innovation systems in the GBA? What is the role of the governments in the regionalisation processes? What are the expected opportunities and challenges offered by the GBA policy initiatives for the future development of Hong Kong’s universities and academic profession?

Hong Kong, given its status as an international finance centre and global city with intense internationalisation and established judicial system operated by the rule of law, will contribute to the GBA development by leveraging on its edge in scientific research and development and international networks of academic research through the world-class academic profession. Scientists and researchers in the city, possessing the competitive advantages of basic research and international partnerships, are highly regarded by the central government. The engagement of Hong Kong’s scientific talents, can play an important role in achieving China’s aspiration of becoming a global technology power.

Analysis of this article implies that the GBA concept is currently China’s ambitious but vague economic plan. The opportunities in which key node cities and knowledge/ innovation clusters will capture and capitalise from the regional ‘co-opetitive” ’entrepreneurial ecosystem are still unclear. The future of the GBA regionalisation is so dynamic and open-ended that grounded concepts related to the governance innovation/ discourse of ‘one country two systems’ and social connectedness and capitalisation with Chinese characteristics will help in making sense of the contextualisation of a Chinese regional innovation system and enhancing the sophistication of reconceptualisation of the Triple Helix model.

This article will add to the literature some novel contextualised knowledge about the GBA’s potential triple-helix relationship between government-university-industry in the 21st century. The empirical example of China’s GBA will also shed light on a new understanding of the role of international social capital in the entrepreneurial knowledge economy, dynamics between basic and applied research, and a synergistic interface between regionalisation and national innovation system.

This writing reveals Hong Kong’s role as the center of China research. Before Reform and Opening in 1979, the British colony was the only place in the world where all international China experts stopped over and obtained the latest and the most accurate accounts of PRC.

The paper analyzes how Hong Kong serves as the intellectual mecca through examining the lives of China scholars amid building up their international profiles. What prompted them to join the China field? How were their lives like in the British crown colony? This paper also unveils the roles of the two research institutions played on Communist China studies: University Services Center (USC) and Union Research Institute (URI). In addition to relying on archival correspondences, personal interviews were also conducted in the last two years.

Despite being the mecca of PRC research, Hong Kong was not the first destination for most aspiring China scholars from the West. Most of these Western scholars did not even plan to devote their whole working lives to the study of China. Through luck, draft avoidance and generous grants from Ford and Carnegie Foundations, these young men and women became internationally iconic figures of East Asian research. To complete their Ph.D. theses and subsequent China-related projects, Hong Kong was a “must-go” destination for them. Under the full protection of the Union Jack, these scholars enjoyed the freedom to speak, write, research and publish. God blessed Hong Kong with such a unique political status amid the Cold War.

155 Argyle Street was the Art Deco compound where Red China experts produced most groundbreaking scholarships. It was not only a two-story structure where they acquired their first-hand resources but a platform where any China-related topics were discussed openly under the auspices of British colonial rule of law. Despite claiming themselves as apolitical, both USC and URI were products of US containment policy against communism. Even so, the colonial government never prohibited the two’s operations. Through this paper, readers will also discover how young men and women became inspired into a career in China studies.

Customized product development is facing the challenges of maintaining mass producibility and exploring customer perception on target products. This paper reports an approach by combining virtual prototyping (VP) with design by manufacturing simulation techniques. By constructing virtual prototypes, accurate assessments of mass producibility and customer acceptance will enable better informed design of customized products. The primary goal of VP for customized product development is to provide a multidisciplinary design definition and rapid prototyping environment for concept development and a tailored, scenario‐based simulation environment for concept evaluation within a single facility. This design environment facilitates the capture and utilization of information generated during the design phase, and the simultaneous generation, at design time, of manufacturing, materials, costing, and scheduling data, together with visual evaluation of customer perception on target products, hence supporting the implementation of concurrent engineering.

This paper examines the information efficiency of KOSDAQ50 and KOSPI200 index futures markets. The study analyzes and compares both markets in three respects : 1) price discovery (lead-lag relationship between spot and futures markets.), 2) volatility-volume relationship, and 3) mispricings between spot and futures prices. The first, analysis shows the in the KOSPI200 market, futures price leads spot price. While spot price leads futures price in the KOSDAQ50 market. The second analysis shows that the volatility-volume relation is positive in the KOSPI200 futures market, supporting the hypothesis of mixture of distribution. In contrast, there is little relation between volume and volatility in the KOSDAQ50 futures market. This result casts doubt that the futures market price reflects information. The last analysis shows that the magnitude of mispricing becomes smaller with more volume in the KOSPI200 futures market, while it becomes larger with more volume in the KOSDAQ50 futures market. The overall results imply that the KOSDAQ50 futures market is less informationally efficient that the KOSPI200 market. The inefficiency appears due to the lack of institutional investor participation, especially securities firms, in making up the market.

The growing importance of the service sector in almost every economy in the world has created a significant amount of interest in service operations. In practice, many service sectors have sought and made use of various enhancement programs to improve their operations and performance in an attempt to hold competitive success. As most researchers recognize, service operations link with customers. The customers as participants act in the service operations system driven by the goal of sufficing his/her added values. This is one of the distinctive features of service production and consumption. In the paper, first, we propose the idea of service operations improvement by mapping objectively the service experience of customers from the view of customer journey. Second, a portraying scheme of service experience of customers based on the IDEF3 technique is proposed, and last, some implications on service operations improvement are given.