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This paper provides an analytical account detailing the historical linkages between Chinese on both sides of the Sino-Hong Kong border from 1841 onwards and examining important incidents of collective actions in the colony and Canton.

Using annual reports published by the colonial administration in Hong Kong, especially those focusing on years that witnessed major incidents of anti-colonial agitations, this paper analyzes how British policymakers were confronted by collective actions mounted by Chinese in Canton and Hong Kong. Building on the works of prominent historians and utilizing the theoretical frameworks of analysts such as Charles Tilly (1978), the author examines if a Cantonese regional solidarity served as the foundation for popular movements, which in turn consolidated a rising Chinese nationalism when Canton and Hong Kong were the focal points of mass actions against imperialism.

Hong Kong Chinese workers were vanguards of the modern Chinese revolutions that transformed not just their homeland, but their lives, allegiances, and aspirations as Chinese in a domain under foreign jurisdiction on Chinese soil, as their actions were emulated by their compatriots outside of South China, thus starting a chain reaction that culminated in the establishment of the Nanjing regime.

This paper reveals that popular movements of Hong Kong Chinese possessed national and international importance, especially when they were supported by their Cantonese compatriots and the two leading Chinese political parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Individualism collectivism measures, along with decision styles, are examined in Taiwan. About 600 questionnaires were distributed directly to employees with managerial positions in private, public, and mixed enter prises in the capital, Taipei. In general, Taiwanese were found to be more collectivist than individualistic. Participants displayed a strong preference for consultative and participative styles and determined that these two styles were the most effective in practice. Further more, participants indicated that their immediate supervisors were mostly consultative and autocratic.

Dialogue has been an elusive concept for academics when it comes to its definition within organisational contexts. In spite of the vast amount of academic research, it is not easy to find concrete proposals – both from theoretical and empirical standpoints – that analyse how companies manage dialogue processes with their stakeholders. The aim of this chapter is to fill this gap by highlighting the role of dialogue in strategic decision-making processes. In order to achieve this purpose, this work is structured into two parts. Firstly, multidisciplinary literature regarding how Public Relations and Management studies research on dialogue is reviewed. Secondly, the chapter presents a managerial proposal of dialogue for decision-making processes called the IDEA model. This chapter aims to scale back the theoretical fragmentation of the concept of dialogue while looking into its practicality based on an original proposal for scholars and practitioners.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Airport economics literature has recently included the supply of concession services among the factors that might affect airport pricing. In particular, there is only little empirical analysis on whether: (i) the supply of airport concession services can stimulate the demand for travel (two-side complementarity) and (ii) the demand for airport concession services is independent of traveling activities (welfare neutrality). In this chapter, we survey papers that have addressed two-side complementarity and welfare neutrality in airport concessions. Our goal is to discuss the different assumptions that have shaped the models and to collect evidences, facts and empirical findings that may support analytical hypotheses. We argue that the notions of two-side complementarity and welfare neutrality might be interrelated – especially when airports invest in concessions in the area accessible to non-passengers. Welfare gains should be assessed on a case by case basis, depending on the type of airport in terms of ownership, size (and the relative mass of connecting passengers compared to origin–destination passengers), and the source of concession revenues. Our arguments might be particularly relevant to policy makers who need to understand (i) whether the supply of concessions reduces or increases the benefits of airport (aviation) price regulation and (ii) whether the effective control of market power may require the regulation of the prices of both the businesses.

Web 2.0 and the social networks have changed how organizations interact with their publics. They enable organizations to engage in symmetric dialogic communications with individuals. Various organizations are increasingly ­using different social media to enhance their visibility and relationships with their publics. They allow them to disseminate information, to participate, listen and actively engage in online conversations with different stakeholders. Some social networks have become a key instrument for corporate communication. Therefore, this chapter presents a critical review on the organizations’ dialogic communications with the publics via social networks. It puts forward a conceptual framework that comprises five key dimensions including ­“active presence,” “interactive attitude,” “interactive resources,” “responsiveness” and “conversation.” This contribution examines each dimension and explains their effect on the organizations’ dialogic communication with the publics. Hence, this contribution has resulted in important implications for corporate communication practitioners as well as for academia. Moreover, it opens future research avenues to academia.

The purpose of this chapter is to address the question of how communication studies can prove its value in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR). As many disciplines seek to understand CSR, the role of communication has been relatively underexplored despite its prevalence in demonstrating and shaping social responsibility positions and practice.

Literature review.

The literature review points to what we consider as four aces. Communication studies alert us to (1) how meaning is constructed through communication, something that has implications for the management of organizations as publics hold different views of CSR and expect different things from them; (2) how a dialogue between an organization and its publics should unfold; (3) how practices of transparency can assist organizations to come across as trustworthy actors; and, importantly, (4) how a complexity view is fruitful to grasp the CSR communication process.

These four key themes could be instructive for practitioners who want to argue for and demonstrate the usefulness of strategic communication for the management of CSR and bridge meso and macro levels of analysis.

This paper aims to determine the role governance plays in the voluntary adoption of Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) Disclosure Standards by Islamic insurance (takaful) operators in the Southeast Asia (SEA) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regions.

This study uses a sample of 44 takaful operators in the SEA and the GCC regions. While corporate governance (CG) strength is measured by the use of the frequently examined variables of the board of directors and audit committee, Shari’ah governance strength is measured by the characteristics of the Shari’ah Supervisory Board (SSB). Content analysis is used to extract disclosure items from the 2014 annual reports. Agency theory, stakeholder theory and political economy theory are argued to support the hypotheses.

The results show that CG strength has a positive and significant effect on the voluntary adoption of AAOIFI Disclosure Standards by takaful operators, indicating that CG plays an important role in the disclosure of information in the annual reports of takaful operators. However, the results show a lack of association between SSB strength and voluntary adoption of AAOIFI Disclosure Standards. Our results suggest that the SSBs may not be as involved as the other CG mechanisms (such as a board of directors and audit committees) in reviewing financial reports. On another note, the level of the political right and civil liberties has a negative and significant effect on the voluntary adoption of AAOIFI Disclosure Standards, providing an indication that stakeholders in a community with greater freedom tend to be more active in pressuring takaful operators to provide more information to justify their existence in the community. Similar to SSB strength, the legal system is also found to have no significant association with the voluntary adoption of the AAOIFI disclosure standards.

This study provides stakeholders with a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the governance role in increasing the transparency of takaful operators by examining the governance factors using a self-constructed disclosure index.

Our study is among the first to provide an in-depth analysis of voluntary adoption of AAOIFI Disclosure Standards for takaful operators in these two regions; therefore, this study has implications for regulators and standard setters. The findings of this study are expected to provide information to regulators and standard setters on the role of governance in improving the transparency of takaful operators.

Despite the huge potential of social media, its functionality and impact for enhanced risk communication remain unclear. Drawing on dialogic theory by integrating both “speak from power” and “speak to power” measurements, the article aims to propose a systematic framework to address this issue.

The impact of social media on risk communication is measured by the correlation between “speak from power” and “speak to power” levels, where the former primarily spoke to two facets of the risk communication process – rapidness and attentiveness, and the latter was benchmarked against popularity and commitment. The framework was empirically validated with data relating to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) risk communication in 25,024 selected posts on 17 official provincial Weibo accounts in China.

The analysis results suggest the relationship between the “speak from power” and “speak to power” is mixed rather than causality, which confirms that neither the outcome-centric nor the process-centric method alone can render a full picture of government–public interconnectivity. Besides, the proposed interconnectivity matrix reveals that two provinces have evidenced the formation of government–public mutuality, which provides empirical evidence that dialogic relationships could exist in social media during risk communication.

The authors' study proposed a prototype framework that underlines the need that the impact of social media on risk communication should and must be assessed through a combination of process and outcome or interconnectivity. The authors further divide the impact of social media on risk communication into dialogue enabler, “speak from power” booster, “speak to power” channel and mass media alternative.