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The leaders of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced to negotiate a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP) in November 2012, which is comprised of 10 ASEAN Member States (Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar) and its six FTA partner countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India). Embedded in the ASEAN Charter and implemented in all existing ASEAN + 1 FTAs, the ASEAN Centrality has been a corner stone principle in ASEAN-centric economic initiatives. Emerging discord in the region, complicated security climate and the rise of China, among others, have put the ASEAN Centrality under challenge. The development of the RCEP provides a timely case to assess ASEAN’s leadership role in creating the world’s most populous Free Trade Area. The RCEP may enhance ASEAN’s central role, but ASEAN needs to address challenges facing the regional integration now and beyond 2015. On the country/economy level, the chapter reviews some ASEAN Member States and their FTA Partners how they practice their ASEAN policy and seek leadership role in ASEAN. The three major players in ASEAN-Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia have reiterated the importance of the ASEAN Centrality in their foreign policy in the past, but debates emerge whether, such as in Indonesia, ASEAN Centrality best suits the national interests. The chapter also explores how the major powers, including China and the United States, respond to and collaborate with the group of smaller developing country players.

This study aims to examine how students in business colleges across three countries, the United States, India and China, interpret environmental sustainability. This study also explores where students from different cultures believe responsibility lies in caring for the environment and how these beliefs represent their cultural and millennial values. The purpose of this study, then, is to investigate millennial business students’ perspectives toward the environment across the three countries holding the largest ecological footprint.

College of business students from the United States, India and China were surveyed. Student responses regarding environmental sustainability were compared to values of the millennial generation and placement of responsibility compared to national culture dimensions.

An average of 66.3 per cent of the coded responses reflect the optimism of the generation. Concern for future generations was a frequent theme. Most responses assigned responsibility for environmental sustainability to “all”. Results support the work of Husted (2005) and Park et al. (2007) as well as the expectations of the millennial generation’s values related to environmental sustainability.

The authors connect national cultural research to environmental sustainability. This study explores where students from different cultures believe responsibility lies in caring for the environment and how these beliefs represent their cultural and millennial values. National cultural combined with millennial opinion is an important area of research for understanding the assignment of responsibility related to environmental sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why teachers use historical fiction in their classroom (e.g. selection and instruction) through the lenses of their pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) and pedagogical tools (Grossman et al., 1999).

The authors explored the following questions: In what ways do elementary school teachers, more specifically fifth grade teachers responsible for early US history as part of their social studies curriculum, use historical fiction in their classrooms? and What factors do elementary school teachers consider when they select historical fiction to use in their classrooms? In order to explore these questions, the authors interviewed eight fifth grade teachers. The authors describe the ways in which these teachers use historical fiction as part of their social studies instruction by employing collective case study (Stake, 1994).

This study has reified this notion that historical fiction is widely used by fifth grade teachers. The authors identified that these teachers are choosing texts that allow them to integrate their language arts and social studies instruction in effective and engaging ways. Many participants described choosing the texts purposefully to address social studies standards during their language arts time. Despite many of these teachers using prescribed curricula for language arts instruction and following state standards for social studies, the teachers in this study felt free to make curricular decisions related to integration. Most importantly, when given this freedom, they chose to integrate purposefully with quality texts.

The primary limitation of this research study is the small sample size (n=8). However among the eight teacher participants, there are two states are represented, varied teaching contexts (e.g. departmentalized, self-contained classrooms), and many years of classroom social studies teaching experience.

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS) (Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, 2010) have prompted teachers to present both informational text and literature in equal balance in upper elementary grades. Little research has been done in the last decade about the ways in which historical fiction addresses these standards.

This paper aims to use utilitarian benefits, hedonic benefits and corporate social responsibility to influence the consumer’s sense of brand identity and brand trust in social enterprise products and, thus, favourably affect repurchase intention.

This study dispatched 430 questionnaires in Taiwan. The top six social enterprises in the organic food industry in Taiwan that accounted for 84.0% of total green organic stores and they were selected for field investigation. This study used structural equation modelling.

The main path indicates that corporate social responsibility has a largely positive effect going through brand identity and brand trust, and then affecting the decision to repurchase. Therefore, the image of` corporate social responsibility was the greatest driving force. The secondary path indicated that utilitarian benefits positively affected brand identity and brand trust, which, in turn, positively affected repurchase intention. Therefore, utilitarian benefits were the secondary driving force of repurchasing social enterprise products.

This study indicates that social enterprises need to carry out effective corporate social responsibility to create a sense of strong brand trust in consumers’ minds. Empirical results can benefit social marketers for their product launches and promotions. Social enterprises can realize consumer differentiation preferences. With the effective grasp the information of consumer perception, the social marketers can turn passive into active and catch the marketing opportunities by the brand identity and trust to the content of the marketing programs design.

The novelty of this study is to propose an identity-repurchase intention (IRI) model, based on consumer information processing lens and self-congruency theory, to investigate the social enterprise perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to thoroughly examine sources of mission diffusion and mission drift in the microfinance industry and to identify consequences of and remedies to these problems.

Extensive field experience relating to individual microfinance institutions (MFIs) and industry trends provides the grounding for a review of the trade and academic literatures in microfinance and social enterprise management.

Mission diffusion arises from pursuing diverse approaches to poverty alleviation and addressing disparate and changing stakeholder interests. Mission drift arises from commercialization and conversion activities aimed toward enhancing ratings and achieving scale. Mission clarity can be regained through clarification of the mission along with more effective corporate governance and performance management systems.

The tension between financial and social performance is not merely ideological – economic realities make it almost impossible to stay on mission. Understanding these realities can help MFIs maintain and regain clarity of mission.

The paper sheds new light on reasons the microfinance industry has not been able to deliver on promises of poverty alleviation during a period of heavy demand rapid scaling.

The financial industry offers a unique setting to study innovations. Financial innovations have fueled the growth of economies, markets and societies. The financial industry has successfully become the breeding ground for innovative services, processes, business models and technologies. This study seeks to provide a holistic view of the literature on financial innovations, synthesize the research findings and offer future directions for research in light of three market developments that are disrupting the industry and opening up a new era for the financial services industry. Disruptions from within and outside the industry offer new generations of radically innovative services. Moreover, new generations of consumers differ from previous generations in their needs and wants and look for innovative ways to handle their financial needs. Finally, significant developments related to financial innovations have emerged in Asia and developing countries.

This study systematically reviews the academic research literature on financial innovations in two phases. The first phase provides a quantitative review of 546 journal articles published between 1990 and 2018. In the second phase, the study synthesizes the extant research on financial innovations and maps them in five research areas: firms' introduction and adoption of FIs, financial innovation development, the outcomes of financial innovations, regulations and intellectual property, and consumers.

The analysis found that disciplines differ with regard to the employed research methodologies, the units of analysis, sources of data and the innovations they examined. A positive trend in the number of published articles during this period is observed. However, studies have primarily focused on the USA and Europe and less so on other parts of the world. The literature synthesis further identifies research gaps in the available research that highlight future research opportunities in light of the three market disruptions. The financial services industry is on the brink of a new era due to disruptions from within and outside the industry and the entrance of new generations of consumers. Moreover, the financial industry has successfully become the breeding ground for innovative services, processes and business models. Therefore, financial innovations offer promising opportunities for bridging the gap between research on product and service innovations.

The work provides a holistic and systematic overview of extant research on financial innovations and highlights future research opportunities in light of the three disruptive market developments. It helps researchers take advantage of the opportunities in studying financial innovations while maintaining industry relevance.

The study is the first to review and synthesize the academic research literature on financial innovations across marketing, finance and innovation disciplines. In addition, the study highlights three primary disruptive forces in the financial industry and identifies future research directions in light of these disruptive forces.