Search results

In the Western world, Carl Jung was the first to posit a theory of synchronicity to explain the startling divinatory power of the I Ching. Yet long before his time and unbeknownst to the West, the Chinese had already institutionalized as their tradition, simple practices for enabling decisions grounded on the synchronous concept. The purpose of this paper is to explain the process from within the context of Chinese Buddhist spirituality.

The approach here is to provide the background of Han Chinese Buddhism in modern China and within it, the wide practices of Kuan Yin spirituality and introducing the tools that the Chinese devised for consulting the Goddess of Mercy, as Kuan Yin is otherwise known. Then a discussion is made, for the first time, of the underlying mechanics as well as the mind and energy aspects. Having so introduced the religious background, spirituality, tools and mechanics, the processes of temple consultations for decisions are then explained. In the discussion, a framework for classifying decisions is outlined along with probability concepts. There is also the requirement for the inquirer to seek a metaphorical interpretation of the poetic imagery as contained in the Qian (a slip of paper).

Through writing this paper, the author wishes readers, both managerial and those in research, to understand what is still the approach (even more widely in China now than before) in how the Chinese – in and outside of China – approach the task of making major, complex decisions. These practices which date from antiquity clearly suggest the Chinese had gone beyond Jungian synchronicity in translating the theory into practice for decision making. In other words, they had long recognized the need for tools, techniques and approaches to help them make complex, difficult decisions: decisions that often go beyond the rational boundaries of the mind.

With the rising impact of the Chinese on the global economy and society, there is clearly a need for works that explain major Chinese processes such as the making of decisions. The art of decision making by the Chinese on the basis of what Jung theorized as synchronicity should become much better understood by researchers and managers.

There are very few academic papers exploring the process of Kuan Yin consultation in decision making by the Chinese. Yet this can be seen across many temples in everyday China and overseas Chinese communities as well as in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The understanding of such processes is necessary for anyone, who wishes to grasp the minds of the Chinese as regards the process involved in the making of major decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine “(Buddhist economics)” in urban reform Buddhism in Thailand. In the West, Buddhist economics is often perceived as a specific economic system, but understanding the sustainable development debate in Buddhist countries requires recognition that there are many versions.

The authors organize the discussion about Buddhist economics into a framework used in the sustainability debate. Current literature, largely from Thai writers, is analyzed to understand their positions on economy and environment.

Four representative movements are discussed which show substantial differences. Status quo Wat Dhammakaya feels that Buddhist economics is mainly about improving individual moral behavior within the current capitalist system, and needs little systemic change. Santi Asoke is explicitly anti-capitalist, and its most serious adherents live simple lifestyles in collectivist agricultural communities. “(Reform-from-within)” seeks a mixed economy containing both capitalist and socialist elements. Kuan Im is also between the extremes, largely small business capitalist and wanting some restraints on perceived predatory big business.

Buddhist perspectives are just beginning to enter mainstream western discussion on sustainability. The most common understanding of Buddhist economics in the west is incomplete, assuming only one form of Buddhist economics. In fact, Buddhist societies, represented here by Thailand, cover the whole range of thinking on sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to bring out the possibility of selecting good leaders in Asian countries, i.e., China and Singapore.

Since comparative historical analysis enhances the objectivity for academic discussion, Deng Xiaoping’s and Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership successions have been chosen as the cases for studies by virtue of “method of agreement”. Incorporating “argument based on the contrary” into the context for macro-historical analysis, this paper characterises the duo’s successful (at least quite successful) leadership successions, thus offering an alternative paradigm beyond Western-style democracy.

Both cases of post-Mao China and the independent Singapore indicate that in quite a number of Asian countries, good leaders could still be selected beyond universal suffrage as practised among Western Electoral Democracies, mainly because of the elites-driven context. As to the duo’s succession results, Deng Xiaoping’s selection of leaders was somewhat successful, while Lee Kuan Yew’s was phenomenal.

This paper offers readers a glance over the possibility of selecting good leaders in Asian countries not fully based on Western-style democracy. Learning from the duo’s leadership successions, the West may treat elite politics as the supplement under Western Electoral Democracies in order to avoid their countries falling into the trap of populism. The West could meanwhile consider the exceptional criteria prized by the duo for leadership successions. Considering such interactions among elites in the real-life context, it could serve as an alternative model to Western-style democracy.

Outside the US and Europe, to establish a good government requires more than Western-style democracy. Adopting universal suffrage fully from the Western model is no longer a panacea to reach the ultimate goal of good governance in the East, i.e., to keep promoting socio-economic renovation can be noted as a prerequisite to have further meaningful political advancement in an Asian polity. The purpose of this paper is to explain how to establish a good but authoritarian government in the East.

Given the good of comparative historical analysis, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore and Deng Xiaoping in China are selected as both cases for “method of agreement.” Further including “argument based on the contrary” to form a context for macro-historical analysis, this paper outlines two characteristics of the duo’s authoritarian leadership, namely, Ideologies and Policy-making; and Political Modernization, and hence provides a more balanced reevaluation of their governance.

Apart from noting how these two Asian giants more or less contributed to their good but authoritarian governments for long in the twentieth century, such a word of authoritarianism to the duo was quite positive to help legitimize their governance, which was far different from many negative views of the Western world.

As theories put forward by Western academics could not entirely justify modernization among Asian societies in the twentieth century, this paper attempts to answer one question: Does the meaning of authoritarianism remain unchanged in the discourse of the East and the West?

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, who governed the country from 1959 to 1990, passed away on 23 March 2015 at the age of 91. The purpose of this paper is to assess his legacy of good governance in Singapore.

The changes in Singapore’s policy context during 1959-2014 are described first before analyzing Lee’s legacy of good governance in Singapore by examining his books and major speeches.

Lee Kuan Yew’s commitment to meritocracy, empowerment of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau to curb corruption effectively, reliance on competitive salaries to attract the “best and brightest” citizens to join the civil service, and maintenance of the rule of law, constitute his legacy of good governance in Singapore.

This paper will be useful to policy-makers, scholars and readers who are interested in learning about Lee Kuan Yew’s contribution to good governance in Singapore.

Marketing has always been recognised as an economic activity involving the exchange of goods and services. Only in recent years have socio‐cultural influences been identified as determinants of marketing behaviour, revealing marketing as a cultural as well as economic phenomenon. Nevertheless, the influence on business activity of cultural differences is obvious but not simple to analyse, describe or categorise. Therefore, the cultural aspect of marketing remains a weak and subsidiary element in the theoretical realm of hospitality management. It has been suggested that cultural differences are an important influence on the successful outcomes of business. This exploratory study examines the new approach to relationship marketing (RM) in the context of eastern culture, to uncover the context and construction of relationships in Chinese society. Traditional Chinese culture stresses the importance of human interaction. The essence of this interaction is kuan‐hsi (personal relationships) which goes far beyond the Western concept of networking as kuan‐hsi is entrenched into every aspect of Chinese society, influencing social, political and commercial relations. The nature of RM theory based on a cultural difference oriented perspective is examined, and the present practice of RM and its specific nature within a Chinese cultural context of hotel management in Taiwan evaluated.

This paper analyses the role of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister from June 1959 to November 1990, in minimising corruption by implementing a zero-tolerance policy toward corruption in Singapore.

This paper is based on the analysis of Lee’s beliefs and the policies he introduced to curb corruption in Singapore.

Lee’s disdain for corruption and his beliefs in meritocracy and the importance of good leadership shaped his commitment to a zero-tolerance policy against corruption, which was enforced impartially and sustained in Singapore for the past 62 years.

This analysis of how Lee transformed Singapore into one of the least corrupt countries in the world would be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners and scholars concerned with minimising corruption in their own countries.

This research is concerned with youth activism in Singapore historically and the importance of legitimacy for understanding the further development of youth activism and Singapore’s democratization process. It takes into account issues pertaining to good governance, economic performance and democratic participation (legitimacy). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The research adopts a historical approach, qualitative in nature with some quantitative analysis based on documentary research, press reports and content analysis.

Historically youth activism was vibrant and dynamic in the fight for independence and against inequality and injustice during the colonial era in Singapore. Under Lee Kuan Yew’s rule, the scope and boundary of democratic participation (legitimacy) were delimited and controlled by the state. State-contained or controlled participation has replaced contentious politics. In the Singapore General Election in 2011, the younger generation of Singapore electorate, who are better educated and well-travelled, however, proved themselves to be rational and pragmatic when they exercised their rights to reject polices detrimental to their socio-economic well-beings as well as to the inclusiveness of society. The People’s Action Party (PAP) had the lowest vote share (60 per cent) in history. Since then the PAP government had stepped up its efforts in improving welfare gains of the citizens as well as managing public discontents with more effective policies. The PAP victory in the Singapore election (GE 2015), however, showed that among other reasons, welfare gains and good governance helped in salvaging the electoral legitimacy vis-à-vis the political legitimacy of the PAP government. However, the PAP government’s continual harsh treatment of critics, young and old, means that to achieve democratic legitimacy, it has to break through the shackles of authoritarian leadership style and elite governance, which have led to the regime’s failure to face up to the reality of an emerging civic participatory culture in the Singapore contexts.

Legitimacy is an important concept. To date there is no systematic application of this concept to the study of Singapore electoral politics. This paper employs Bruce Gilley’s determinants of legitimacy – democratic legitimacy, welfare gains and good governance – to explicate the basis of the PAP’s regime legitimacy, the contradictions inherent in state-contained participation and political representation that delimited and undermined the nature, scope and boundary of democratic legitimacy.

Malaysia and Singapore had parted more than five decades ago. Much of the existing literature concerned about the bilateral ties between two economies focusing on the political economy perspective. This paper aims to provide insights on the economic development and prospects of Malaysia and Singapore at the national level. In addition, this paper also makes a pioneering attempt at conducting a comprehensive comparative analysis between Malaysia and Singapore at the city level.

This paper offers a case study of Malaysia and Singapore by assessing their national economic competitiveness, urban standards of living and quality of life. The paper leverages on a series of indices such as the competitiveness index for ASEAN-10, the cost of living, wages and purchasing power of ordinary residents, as well as the liveable cities index to perform the analysis.

In terms of national competitiveness, the analysis shows that Singapore and Malaysia have been leading the ASEAN region from 2000 onwards, being the top- and second-ranked, respectively. Malaysia still lags Singapore in several aspects such as attractiveness to foreign investors and standard of living, education and social stability despite insignificant differences in the ranking. City-level analysis shows that the cost of living in Singapore is almost double of that in Kuala Lumpur, although living in Singapore is more affordable owing to the higher wage rate received by the ordinary citizens.

This paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this paper assesses economic development in Singapore and Malaysia instead of focusing on cross-straits relations. Second, the study reflects the view that the improvement of standards of living and quality of life for ordinary residents is paramount to economic development. The competitiveness index and city-level benchmarks used in the paper reflect the standards of living and the quality-of-life dimensions. Third, the focus on city-level analysis in addition to conventional national-level analysis helps to provide policymakers with practical policy implications against the backdrop of rapid urbanisation.

This study aims to examine the effect of the separation of control and ownership on the efficiency performance of Taiwanese electronics firms.

The paper employs data envelopment analysis to estimate efficiency performance. Following Kuan et al., the paper measures the severity of a firm's agency problems using the difference between voting rights and cash flow rights, and the difference between seat control rights and cash flow rights. Using a panel dataset for the period from 2004 to 2010, the paper runs OLS regressions to find the relationship between efficiency performance and the separation of control and ownership.

The results show that both the divergence between voting rights and cash flow rights, and the divergence between seat control rights and cash flow rights are significantly and negatively related to efficiency performance. Using Tobit regression in the second stage also provides a consistent result.

Shareholders, especially the minority group, should think twice before investing in a firm with a high deviation of control and ownership.

This is the first paper to examine the effect of the separation of control and ownership on the efficiency performance of Taiwanese electronics firms. The empirical evidence suggests existence of negative entrenchment effects in the electronics industry in Taiwan.