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This paper aims to reveal and compare the characteristics of the facilities management (FM) education programs in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea (i.e. the Four Asian Dragons) and makes suggestions for their future development.

A team consisting of academics from the Four Asian Dragons held a face-to-face meeting to discuss and define the scope and framework of the review, followed by an extensive search to identify literature and information germane to the study. Individual parts of reviews, prepared by the team members for their respective places, were cross-reviewed before refinement and consolidation into the current paper.

The term “facility (or facilities) management” appears in most of the programs reviewed, but terms such as “environment” and “property” also appear in some programs’ titles. The programs reviewed range from certificate level to doctorate level; those between diploma level and master level are more common. Most of the programs have obtained professional accreditations, but some are accredited by FM-related rather than FM-specific professional bodies.

Further research should investigate issues such as the performance of the programs reviewed, extent to which they have met the market needs and how they compare with the counterparts in other regions (e.g. Europe, America). For such research, the process of the study reported here and its findings about the status quo of the programs can serve as references.

To strengthen FM as a well-established discipline, it is imperative to have the programs accredited by FM-specific professional bodies.

Providing the first-ever international review on the major FM programs in Asia, this paper is useful to program planners, educators and researchers in the FM field.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the job satisfaction level of quantity surveyors (QSs); identify the personal characteristics that influence their job satisfaction; and provide recommendations to employers on how to enhance job satisfaction of QSs with different personal characteristics.

Data were collected via a self-administered questionnaire to QSs in Singapore.

QSs feel that they have significantly high passion for the job, are significantly satisfied with task variety and are treated fairly. However, they are significantly dissatisfied with their workload, hours worked, and lack of work-life balance. QSs in upper management have significantly higher job passion. Those in mid-management are more dissatisfied with their income. QSs who are married/attached, older, and more experienced are significantly more dissatisfied with their workload and hours worked than singles, younger, and less experienced QSs.

Some dimensions of job satisfaction were not measured. Non-personal characteristics such as type of projects handled and type of clients were not investigated.

Employers should investigate what goes into QSs’ workload, and weed out those that are of low value and unproductive in order to reduce their workload and hours worked, and thereby increase their job satisfaction.

The study contributes to human resource management by identifying the type of QSs who are more likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs.

This study shows that personal differences of QSs affect different dimensions of their job satisfaction. To maximize job satisfaction, employers could choose QSs who have specific characteristics, make changes to the work environment or redesign their jobs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value of internships for professional careers in the built environment (BE) sector from the perspective of industry practitioners. It examines the perceptions of practitioners about internship and explores the relevance of internships for professional careers in the sector.

The research methods used were questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews and focus group discussion. The study focussed on careers such as architects, civil engineers, facility managers, project managers and quantity surveyors.

It was found that quantity surveyors and civil engineers value internship the most and are more likely to hire those who interned with them. Project managers also value internships but to a lesser extent. Facility managers and architects value internship the least and are also least likely to offer positions to their ex-interns. It is not conclusive whether internships are absolutely necessary to increase undergraduates’ employability upon their graduation.

The study is limited to only five professions and focused on the perceptions of professionals and not the interns or academic supervisors.

Recommendations are made to improve internship programmes in the BE sector. These include making internships compulsory for students who intend to pursue civil engineering and quantity surveying careers and extending the duration of internships to six months.

The views of professionals in the BE sector are uncovered. Tertiary institutions can use the findings to improve their internship programmes and their students’ employability upon graduation.

Jonathan Becker is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership of the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA. Jonathan's teaching and scholarly endeavors occur at the intersection of educational technology, policy, law and leadership. Currently, Jonathan is serving as the evaluator of a multi-million dollar, multi-year grant program funded by the U.S. Department of Education to develop simulations and to support leadership preparation and is a co-investigator of an NSF-funded grant targeted at research and development of science curriculum modules for students in underserved areas.

The corporate atmosphere in recent times speaks volumes about the crises of confidence and credibility brewing among professionals due to the rising incidences of unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). The study developed a model to demonstrate the underlying mechanisms through which unethical organizational culture (UOC) influences UPB through the mediating roles of idealism and relativism.

Using a cross-sectional approach, data were collected through questionnaires that were distributed to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the Plateau state in Nigeria. A total of 269 responses were obtained and analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique via Smart-PLS software.

The results revealed that the relationship between UOC and UPB was significant. The indirect predictive role of UOC on UPB was established via relativism but not through idealism. The results indicate that the preponderance of UPB among SMEs is a product of UOC which breeds a relativist ideology that ultimately promotes UPB. Finally, implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

This study contributes to UPB in two unique ways. First, the authors bring to the fore the critical role of UOC in the debate on UPB which has been under-explored. Second, the study also established the mediating role of relativism in the relationship between UOC and UPB.

My interest in public administration as a discipline was sparked by Dr Joseph P.L. Jiang, who was a student of the late Professor Fred W. Riggs at Indiana University, in 1968 when I took his course in public administration during my final year at the Department of Political Science, University of Singapore. I also remember fondly my first meeting with Professor Riggs during the same year when he gave a guest lecture in Dr Jiang's course (Quah, 2008d). I met Fred again many years later at various international conferences but I remember fondly our meetings in Chiangmai in June 1993 and in Honolulu in June 1996. I have also remained in touch with Dr Jiang after his return to Taipei.

This study aims to explore the influence of risk preference and information acquisition on outdoor tourism safety decision-making.

Five hundred twenty outdoor tourists were surveyed, and data were analyzed using two-stage regression.

Risk preference positively affects tourists’ safety decisions for outdoor travel. The greater the risk preference is, the more likely the tourists are to make the risky decision of outdoor tourism. Information acquisition significantly negatively affects tourists’ safety decisions for outdoor tourism. Tourists who obtain information through social channels are more likely to make safer travel decisions than those who do not.

Risk preference and information acquisition are introduced into outdoor tourism safety research.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an effective and efficient numerical method that can consider natural frequency in multi-material topology optimization (MMTO) and which is scalable for complex three-dimensional (3D) problems.

The optimization algorithm is developed by combining custom FORTRAN code for MMTO with the open-source software Mystran, which is used as a finite element analysis (FEA) solver. The proposed algorithm allows the designer to shift the fundamental frequency of the design beyond a defined frequency spectrum from the initial designing phase. The methodology is formulated in a smooth and differentiable manner, with the sensitivity expressions, required by gradient-based optimization solvers, presented.

Natural frequency constraint has been successfully implemented into MMTO. The use of open-source software Mystran as an FEA solver in the algorithm provides ability to solve complex problems. Mystran offers powerful built-in functions for eigenvalue extraction using methods like Givens, modified Givens, inverse power and the Lanczos method, which provide the ability to solve complex models. The algorithm is successfully able to solve both two- and three-material MMTO jobs for two-dimensional and 3D geometries.

Natural frequency constraint consideration into topology optimization is very challenging due to three common issues: localized eigenmodes, mode switching and high computational cost. The proposed algorithm addresses these inherent issues, implements natural frequency constraint to MMTO and solves for complex models, which is hardly possible using conventional methods.

Using a sample of 86 countries over the 1960–1999 period, this paper investigates the differential growth effects of ethnic division across cultural regions. While the evidence supports a negative relationship between ethnic fragmentation and economic growth, this relationship is significant only for Africa and Latin America. This study also uses a religious measure of ethnic fragmentation, and finds that religious diversity has a positive impact on growth. This impact, however, is present only in the Middle East and East Asia. Some possible reasons behind the heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity are also explored.