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This chapter aims to investigate and interpret China’s educational aid by analyzing its history, philosophies, and practices in Africa. The study is based on review and analysis of governmental documents, reports, academic papers, and news by Chinese and foreign scholars on China’s aid, particularly educational aid to Africa. The analysis unveils three transformations of China’s aid “from pro-ideology to de-ideology,” “from single area to multiple areas,” and “from pragmatic economy driven to sustainable and humane economy focused” in Africa. Meanwhile, it indicates a continuity of the philosophy of solidarity, morality, and reciprocity in China’s South-South cooperation with African educational development.

The analysis also shows China’s educational aid does not match well with the framework of the Western donors. China, under the FOCAC framework, is devoted to higher education cooperation, human resources training program, scholarship, and Chinese language education with African partners. With the growth of its economic and political influence, China will play multiple roles as the biggest developing country and as an active promoter and provider for South-South cooperation in the negotiation and construction of the post-2015 agenda. Nevertheless, we assume China will keep a pragmatic higher education cooperation with its developing country partners to inclusively link it with business, technology transfer, and people-to-people exchange.

This study delivers a comprehensive review and analysis of paradigm shift, philosophy, mechanism, and practice of China’s educational aid to Africa to fill up the literature gap in this field. It also timely presents China’s stance toward discussion on the post-2015 agenda.

This empirical study aims to test the impact of four types of entrepreneurial context on the growth and success rates of new ventures in China and related the findings to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship dating back 2,500 years to ancient China.

After describing the business guidelines given by Fan Li, an entrepreneurial merchant selling Chinese medicines in ancient times, a conceptual framework was extracted as the basis for a discussion of the relationship between entrepreneurial context and entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial context was conceptualized as being composed of family, social, business and institutional components. Five hypotheses about the influence of these different context variables on entrepreneurial activities were developed. From data compiled from the sampling of 239 business entrepreneurs in Beijing, a hierarchical regression was formed and the hypotheses tested.

The impact of entrepreneurial context on entrepreneurial activity can be divided into two layers, internal factors (e.g. family context) which are similar to “yin” (?) in the traditional Chinese philosophy while external factors (e.g. business, social and institutional contexts) were like “yang” (?). The two factors play different roles in entrepreneurial activities, while different contexts mediate and moderate each other in complex ways.

Research limitations pertain to the size and locale of the sample. A larger sample that involved subjects from different regions would facilitate a wider understanding of the effects of entrepreneurial context upon the entrepreneurial process.

The theory of entrepreneurial context is in its beginning stages, and the paper completed a systematic study of entrepreneurial context through theoretical model building using large-sample empirical research. In addition, the paper is the first ever to relate the theory and practice of entrepreneurship back 2,500 years. Through a multi-research methodology, the study clearly shows the critical importance of integrating Chinese history into the development of management theory.

Purpose – This experimental economics study using brain imaging techniques investigates the risk-ambiguity distinction in relation to the source preference hypothesis (Fox & Tversky, 1995) in which identically distributed risks arising from different sources of uncertainty may engender distinct preferences for the same decision maker, contrary to classical economic thinking. The use of brain imaging enables sharper testing of the implications of different models of decision-making including Chew and Sagi's (2008) axiomatization of source preference.

Methodology/approach – Using fMRI, brain activations were observed when subjects make 48 sequential binary choices among even-chance lotteries based on whether the trailing digits of a number of stock prices at market closing would be odd or even. Subsequently, subjects rate familiarity of the stock symbols.

Findings – When contrasting brain activation from more familiar sources with those from less familiar ones, regions appearing to be more active include the putamen, medial frontal cortex, and superior temporal gyrus. ROI analysis showed that the activation patterns in the familiar–unfamiliar and unfamiliar–familiar contrasts are similar to those in the risk–ambiguity and ambiguity–risk contrasts reported by Hsu et al. (2005). This supports the conjecture that the risk-ambiguity distinction can be subsumed by the source preference hypothesis.

Research limitations/implications – Our odd–even design has the advantage of inducing the same “unambiguous” probability of half for each subject in each binary comparison. Our finding supports the implications of the Chew–Sagi model and rejects models based on global probabilistic sophistication, including rank-dependent models derived from non-additive probabilities, e.g., Choquet expected utility and cumulative prospect theory, as well as those based on multiple priors, e.g., α-maxmin. The finding in Hsu et al. (2005) that orbitofrontal cortex lesion patients display neither ambiguity aversion nor risk aversion offers further support to the Chew–Sagi model. Our finding also supports the Levy et al. (2007) contention of a single valuation system encompassing risk and ambiguity aversion.

Originality/value of chapter – This is the first neuroimaging study of the source preference hypothesis using a design which can discriminate among decision models ranging from risk-based ones to those relying on multiple priors.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel algorithm for image inpainting, which has been widely used for removing unwanted objects from images or reconstructing damaged photographs.

An image piecewise inpainting technique based on radial basis function (RBF) is used to transform the 2D image inpainting problem into 3D implicit surface reconstruction problem. And a RBF center reduction method is proposed. By RBF resampling, the algorithm can nicely fix the damaged image or remove specific objects.

Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms can prevent the edge blur caused by the isotropic character of RBF, and effectively reduce the RBF centers without a loss in accuracy.

The proposed inpainting approach is interesting for its combination of RBF method and region segmentation that can handle the restoring of high‐variation areas.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between green initiatives, green performance, and a firm’s financial performance in the world. The existing literature on environmental initiatives and their impacts is limited to the context of a particular country. This gap points to a lack of clarification of variations in environmental regulation and in economic disparity which may affect the impact of green initiatives on green performance and on financial performance.

Data on the world top 500 publicly traded companies are collected from Compustat, a database of financial, statistical and market information on global companies, and from Newsweek, an information gatekeeper that enables consumers to access a list of environmentally friendly companies. The paper adopts linear regression to test the relationships between variables.

The results show that green initiatives have a positive impact on green performance, which in turn has a positive impact on financial performance. However, the impact of green initiatives varies by country. The study revealed that companies in European countries and Canada lead in the green initiatives and green performance, followed by the USA and Japan. China and Hong Kong lag behind compared to other countries.

The small sample size in some of the countries used in this study may impact the validity of the results.

This study suggests that companies that seek financial benefits of pursuing green initiatives should have a long-term orientation when implementing these initiatives and should consider the country where they operate.

The current study provides a global understanding of the relationship between green initiatives, green performance, and financial performance, and contributes to the literature by highlighting variation among countries and by year.

Nowadays, automotive engines are controlled by electronic control units (ECUs), and the engine idle speed performance is significantly affected by the setup of control parameters in the ECU. The engine ECU tune‐up is done empirically through tests on a dynamometer (dyno). In this way, a lot of time, fuel and human resources are consumed, while the optimal control parameters may not be obtained. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel ECU setup optimization approach for engine idle speed control.

In the first phase of the approach, Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) and a multi‐input/output least squares support vector machine (LS‐SVM) is proposed to build up an engine idle speed model based on dyno test data, and then a genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to obtain optimal ECU setting automatically subject to various user‐defined constraints.

The study shows that the predicted results using the estimated model from LS‐SVM are in good agreement with the actual test results. Moreover, the optimization results show a significant improvement on idle speed performance in a test engine.

As the methodology is generic it can be applied to different vehicle control optimization problems.

The research is the first attempt to integrate a couple of paradigms (LHS, multi‐input/output LS‐SVM and GA) into a general framework for constrained multivariable optimization problems under insufficient system information. The proposed multi‐input/output LS‐SVM for modelling of multi‐input/output systems is original, because the traditional LS‐SVM modelling approach is suitable for multi‐input, but single output systems. Finally, this is the first use of the novel integrated framework for automotive engine idle‐speed control optimization.

June's American Library Association conference saw first announcement of an online searching and document delivery system which UMI claims is ‘unlike anything available today or even on the drawing boards.’

Tax compliance involves complying with the tax rules and regulation, which encompasses the filing, reporting and payment of tax. The two aspects of tax non-compliance are tax evasion and tax avoidance. While the ethicality of tax evasion as an illegal act of reducing tax is clear, the consensus regarding the morality of tax avoidance as a legal act of minimizing tax is mixed. This chapter will discuss the ethical perspective of tax (non)compliance.

We approach this topic by discussing the two important terms of tax non-compliance namely tax evasion and tax avoidance from the ethical point of view. The tax evasion and tax avoidance were critically evaluated to justify whether it is ethical or not. The tax non-compliance is also associated to the corporate governance which if do effectively help to protect the interest of larger stakeholder.

In a nutshell, tax non-compliance such as tax avoidance and tax evasion is unethical act and these acts of non-compliance go against the spirit of contemporary corporate governance which sought to protect the interest of the stakeholders.

Tax non-compliance could enhance shareholders wealth (in terms of reduced tax); it affects the distribution of wealth (public benefits financed by tax revenues) among the society at large as another stakeholder affected by such act. Future research may be conduct to investigate this to the larger sample.

Firms should avoid engaging in non-compliance activities such as engaging in tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance as part of its social obligation to the society in line with the spirit espoused in the contemporary corporate governance.

This paper argues that tax non-compliance is unethical and highlights the importance of having efficient corporate governance for larger stakeholder’s interest.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a new idea of vibration control which minimizes joint‐torques and suppresses vibration of the flexible redundant manipulator.

Using the kinematics redundancy feature of the flexible redundant manipulator, the self‐motion in the joint space can be properly chosen to both suppress vibration and minimize joint‐torques.

The study shows that the flexible redundant manipulator still has the second optimization feature on the premise of vibration suppression. The second optimization feature can be used to minimize joint‐torques on the premise of vibration suppression.

To a flexible redundant manipulator, its joint‐torques and vibration can be reduced simultaneously via its kinematics redundancy feature.

The method and algorithm discussed in the paper can be used to minimize joint‐torques and suppress vibration for the flexible redundant manipulator.

The paper contributes to the study on improving dynamic performance of the flexible redundant manipulator via its kinematics redundancy feature. The second optimization capability of the flexible redundant manipulator is discovered and used to both minimize joint‐torques and suppress vibration.