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A survey of 16 female entrepreneurs in Singapore, by interview or questionnaire, to establish their present characteristics and changes over the last two decades was conducted. They were found to be better educated than the general population of women, concentrated in the service sector, to own small or medium‐sized businesses, and to be moving into high growth industries in disproportionately high numbers. Fewer women than previously are family business helpers and inheritance of a business is also less important.

With globalization and accompanying expatriation becoming a reality for developed countries, including those that have recently arrived in Southeast Asia, this study explored the effects of family and personal characteristics on Singaporeans’ willingness to accept an expat assignment.

Data were collected from a random sample of 191 managers and engineers across a number of organizations in Singapore.

The results indicated that the perception of a negative influence on family members has a negative impact on Singapore engineers and managers intention to accept an international assignment. Further, both need for achievement and perseverance personal characteristics had a positive impact on intention for an international assignment.

The study findings suggest how international human resource manager can provide help to expatriates and their family in dealing with family issues related to expatriation.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of organizational culture and human resource management (HRM) effectiveness on financial performance of a sample of Singapore‐based companies involved in mergers and acquisition activities.

The study used the method of content analysis to collect information on cultural values and HRM effectiveness, using Kabanoff's content analysis dictionary. Culture profiles were then assigned to organizations in the sample following the results from cluster analysis. Various financial ratios were used to measure organizational performance. Finally, regression analysis was performed to test various hypotheses.

The key finding of the study is that organizations with either elite or leader value profile, when complemented by human resource effectiveness, had a better financial performance as compared to organizations with meritocratic or collegial value profiles. It thus follows that, to achieve better financial results by undertaking merger and acquisition activities organizations need to have elite or leadership value profile.

This study makes a contribution to the literature by producing new empirical evidence to bear on the effect of organizational culture and human resource effectiveness on financial performance of merging acquiring organizations from a newly industrialized Asian country.

Study used 357 Singaporean managers to document their availability for international assignments and their international aspiration. To understand factors that affect their international aspiration, we investigated the impact of family, career, culture and host country factors and personal entrepreneurial characteristics on mangers’ international aspiration and willingness to accept international assignment. Overall, results show that family, spouse and children and personal characteristics influence both the degree of willingness travel and determinants of managers’ attitude toward international assignments. Career and attitudes of spouses will likely have a significant impact on managers’ willingness to accept international assignments. Prior cross‐cultural international experience and personal entrepreneurial characteristics are also important factors that influence managers’ willingness to accept international assignments. Implications for research and practice are also discussed.

Career Orientations in Women Volume 44 No. 9 of Human Relations includes an article by Millicent E. Poole, Janice Langan‐Fox and Mary Omodel entitled “Career Orientations in Women from Rural and Urban Backgrounds.”

Managers working for multinational companies need to be culturally sensitive, as do those responsible for training methods and materials in different cultural settings. The issues associated with the effectiveness of applying training and development techniques and processes across different cultures are focused on, specifically: the need for human resource development professionals to be sensitive of cultural factors in different nationalities in their training activities; the need for cross‐cultural training for managers; and the impact of cultural factors on the processes in training and development.

A number of studies conducted in the 1970s observed that males and females differed in their job attribute preferences. This study revisited the issue of gender differences in attribute preferences. Final‐year undergraduates (n= 270) were asked to rate 17 job attributes in terms of how important each was to them in choosing a job/employer. Results indicated that the effect of gender on job attribute preferences was generally weak. Other variables such as age, ethnicity, professional training area, and prior work experience also did not have a significant impact on undergraduates′ preferences.

If they are to have any chance of success, new nutrition ideas need fresh ways of cooking, costing, buying and storing. This new series of articles, by Irene Finch, links nutrition, food technology and educational psychology to help home economists and others who are innovating. In the first article she summarises the dietary modifications generally recommended and relates these to flour cookery, the most difficult area for new inventions.

The paper aims to investigate the prevailing institutional logics that underpin the organisational behaviours of Chinese contractors and the institutional complexity they face across several strategic areas when they undertake projects abroad.

The paper draws mainly on industry literature, reports and government websites to develop a typology of two ideal types of institutional logics that prevail among Chinese international contractors. The configurations of institutional complexity in different strategic areas are analysed through pattern-matching.

Two main logics are identified, namely, construction and investment logics. These logics in turn lead to patterns of volatile complexity in the strategic areas of business, technology, human resources and marketing; patterns of aligned complexity in operational and information technology strategic areas; and patterns of segregated complexity in financial strategic area.

The paper presents an ongoing doctoral research. It provides a preliminary understanding of the institutional logics affecting Chinese international contractors and sets out the first step to understand the relationship between complex institutional environments and organisational responses.

Chinese international contractors commonly face resistance, and at times resentment, from the local industries in the countries they operate. The findings of this paper are a first step towards a better understanding of why this is the case and what can be done to rectify the situation and improve long and short-term project performance.

This paper provides practical implications for Chinese contractors to understand their internal context of institutional complexity and provides the basis for further understanding of Chinese contractors’ strategic responses.

This study aims to determine college/university students’ mobile phone practices to understand key user preferences and set a baseline understanding for the development of prospective library informational mobile services.

This study is based on the results of an online-survey method. The authors recruited students majoring in the Information Science program in School of Information at Pratt Institute (USA) (74 participants) and in Kyiv National University of Cultural and Arts (Ukraine) (89 participants).

The general trends in the use of mobile technologies by American and Ukrainian students were identified. Key components of library mobile services are offered. Such services may include information and reference service via messengers; development of library mobile applications of audio and video content; access to educational, scientific, popular science literature and fiction; and supplementing online services with library chatbots.

This study was limited to only students majoring in information science at university; however, the data obtained helps outline several general trends common to student youth who are actively working with information.

The obtained results will be useful in the practical activities of libraries and other information institutions for the development of a comprehensive information service based on mobile technology.

This study contributes to understanding how to improve library informational service considering users habits and preferences. Libraries management and librarians can use the findings as a basis for prioritizing the improvement of library informational mobile service.