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We present, in this study, a method for comparing the relative effectiveness of different non-profit institutions with similar objectives. In addition, we show how this measure of relative effectiveness is related theoretically to their relative efficiency. Relative effectiveness is shown to be a product of the efficacy with which potentially utilizable resources can be converted into usable inputs, and the efficiency with which the inputs are converted to outputs or outcomes. Finally, drawing on developments in data envelopment analysis, we illustrate the new methodology using data from 109 institutions of higher education.

In this paper, the authors examine how religious and political factors affect a firm's corporate governance diversity policies.

The authors develop five basic empirical models. Model 1 examines how religious beliefs and political affiliation determine whether a firm will establish diversity incentive in its senior executives' performance assessment. Model 2 investigates how the diversity goal, religious beliefs and political affiliation separately affect the level of actual diversity achieved. Model 3 examines how the diversity goal and environmental factors interact to affect the level of actual diversity achieved. Model 4 and Model 5 examine whether the diversity incentive in senior executives' compensation plan and the environmental factors (religious belief and political affiliation) help to reduce the compensation differentials between male and female executives.

The authors find that firms located in more liberal counties with more Mainline Protestants and less Republican voters in the United States are more likely to include workforce diversity as a criterion in evaluating their senior executives. The authors also provide evidence that firms with diversity goals have more female directors, more female senior executives and more minority directors. However, they find no evidence that the compensation differentials between male and female executives are smaller in these firms. Finally, they find that external environment affects the effectiveness of the implementation of the diversity goals.

In line withthis branch of research, the authors expand the literate on the link between corporate culture and corporate decision-making by investigating the non-financial performance measures. Besides the corporate decision-making in investment, financial reporting and social responsibilities as documented in prior studies, the authors argue that the religious beliefs and political affiliations could also affect the development and implementation of corporate non-financial performance goals in executive incentive contracts.

Libraries worldwide, including Hong Kong, increasingly use social media tools to introduce and promote their services and resources to users. Instagram, in particular, is used to target younger users. This study investigates the effectiveness of Instagram in promoting library services and university students' perceptions of the value of Instagram as a learning support tool.

A major academic library in Hong Kong was chosen for this study. Library users' habits, perceptions, preferences, and views on Instagram's effectiveness as a learning support tool were compared in two age groups. The data were collected using a survey based on the 5E Instructional Model.

Despite the significantly higher frequency of Instagram use by younger students, the results showed that Instagram was probably an ineffective promotion platform for either age group because of low user engagement, relatively neutral perception of Instagram as a learning support tool, and notably low user acceptance of Instagram as a promotional tool.

Studies of student perspectives on various social media tools have increased; however, few have explored the use of Instagram, especially in Hong Kong or Asia. This study provides researchers and librarians with practical insights into current Instagram users' engagement, perceptions, and preferences and their view of its effectiveness as a learning support tool. The study also provides suggestions for improving the current situation.

Past research has suggested the influence of family‐oriented collectivistic culture on the behavior and performance of traditional Chinese manufacturing firms. However, insufficient empirical research has been conducted to empirically test the influence. More importantly, insufficient research has been conducted to test how the collectivistic culture in Chinese societies would affect the performance of manufacturing firms. This paper addresses these issues by comparing the behaviors and performance of two groups of firms in China, i.e., investment from overseas Chinese firms and investment from non‐Chinese Western firms, in one of China's fast‐growing manufacturing industries. Interesting differences are found between the overseas Chinese firms and those from other foreign countries. The findings support the influence of societal culture on firms' behavior and performance, but do not support the predictions on performance based on the arguments of cultural distance. This paper concludes with a discussion on implications of the findings for both researchers and practitioners.

This study aims to evaluate social media’s communication effectiveness on travel product promotion among college students in Hong Kong. As traveling has become a popular activity, promoting travel products via social network sites (SNSs) has become common. Thus, identifying factors that affect shopping decisions is vital to tourism businesses. While the number of people using social communication tools has increased quickly, social media marketing provides a new strategy for the local travel business to sell and promote their products online.

This study adopts the attention, interest, desire and action (AIDA) marketing communication model to explore the influence of Facebook on the marketing of travel products among youngsters. Because Facebook is the most widely used social media platform in Hong Kong, it was selected for this study. An online survey was conducted via Google Form to collect responses from students of different local universities.

The findings indicate that our respondents consider purchasing travel products according to brand, discount and customer comments. They generally perceived Facebook advertising as a platform that could deliver various updated travel promotions and discounts, which can be adequately explained based on the AIDA model. However, respondents were unwilling to recommend the travel company to their friends on Facebook, even if they were satisfied with the travel products after purchase. Also, Facebook promotion could positively influence, draw the attention and make travel desire of the customer, but no positive influence to arouse their interest.

Although there are many studies on the travel industry’s marketing and social media, scant studies have investigated the influence of social media on the promotion of travel products with the AIDA model. In particular, it is crucial to explore what factors can affect young people’s decision-making, their perception of social media advertising and how marketers can make good use of this channel.

Graduate students of the University of New England (U.N.E.) during the period 1970–1984 wrote one hundred dissertations on morale in a wide variety of educational institutions. The Staff Morale Questionnaire (S.M.Q.) developed and progressively refined at U.N.E. was extensively used in these and other studies in Australia. The project's greatest value lay in the way it enabled external (i.e. off‐campus) students to develop their academic critical abilities in a guided research effort, and in the ripple effect which has enabled numerous administrators in Australian schools to gain some sensitisation to and understanding of the importance of organisational morale.

The service-profit chain model (Heskett, Jones, Loverman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994) highlights the well-documented relationship between employee and customer attitudes suggesting that employees who are satisfied and engaged with their work provide better customer service resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction and, ultimately, driving firm revenue. The authors propose an expansion of the service-profit margin identifying the leadership behaviors that create positive employee attitudes and engagement. Specifically, the authors suggest that leaders who focus on recognition, involvement, growth and development, health and safety, and teamwork (Kelloway, Nielsen, & Dimoff, 2017) create a psychologically healthy workplace for customer service providers and, ultimately, an enhanced customer experience.

This study aims to explore how social media help promote environmental education and pro-environmental behaviours by analysing how young adults access social media and traditional media to obtain environmental information differently, how environmental ideas are disseminated through social media and how people perceive and realise environmentalism.

This is a qualitative study based on a semi-structured interview with student participants. The questions used in the interview were developed by on the integrated waste reduction model by Nishio and Takeuchi (2005) and the enhanced model proposed by Ho et al. (2019).

The results indicate that young adults agree and accept that living environmentally friendly lifestyles is an important goal. Although they acquire environmental information from social media, they seldom share or interact with those social media posts. This behaviour implies that they are information receivers when dealing with such contents.

The finding of this study provides insight for stakeholders on how to promote related knowledge and encourage people to be “greener” more often and construct a friendlier atmosphere for fostering more in-depth environmental discussions on social media.

The impact of ideological polarization has been a serious concern, given its damages to society. In addition, Schadenfreude is increasingly common in the era of ideological polarization. Previous literature may have discussed the cause and outcomes of schadenfreude in general but not specifically related to ideological polarization. This study aims to serve to establish a more informed understanding of online schadenfreude as an outcome of ideological polarization and help society recover from the damages.

The authors adopted a case research method with netnography for our study, given that the authors are exploring the phenomena of online schadenfreude, which involves multiple dimensions.

The authors identified a three-level model that illustrates how schadenfreude is driven as an outcome of ideological polarization, i.e. macro-environment, camp/partisan and target. These factors of different levels involve political viewpoint differences, perceived appearance, personal conduct, aggressive norms and polarized environment with a lack of conventional opinion expression channel. Moreover, attackers may demonstrate a belief in Karma, creativity and a sense of humor and may call for actions.

While previous literature focused on the relationship between fake news, echo chambers and ideological polarization, this study is a relatively earlier one on studying schadenfreude as an outcome of ideological polarization, which would facilitate to formulate the solution to repair the damages created to ideological polarization. The authors also discussed the enablers as well as the self-reinforcing nature of ideological polarization, and provided some practical implications for politicians and government officials.

Social networks provide convenient communication and connection among people, and they have become essential in college students' lives. However, problems also come along with increasing concern about trust and privacy issues. This research attempts to investigate the trust and privacy perceptions of university students when using social networks for learning purposes.

This paper investigated the differences in trust and privacy perceptions between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students through an online survey with 96 subjects in Hong Kong. The authors used the Mann–Whitney U test to compare the differences between the responses provided by UG and PG subjects.

The authors found that both PG and UG students were generally satisfied with the use of social networking sites (SNSs) for learning. However, PG subjects used SNSs more for learning and were more willing to exchange with classmates than UG and PG perceived higher value of SNSs than UG students. The authors also found a relative lack of privacy awareness of UG students.

Based on the study’s findings, the authors made some recommendations about the application of SNSs for learning purposes. The authors also suggest universities provide more guidance and training to students on the privacy issues of SNSs.

Even though some previous studies have focused on studying privacy and trust issues on SNSs, studies that aim at university students in the context of Asia–Pacific are rather limited, especially university students' own trust and privacy perceptions on using SNSs for learning purposes.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-02-2020-0042