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Three types of industrial buyer-seller relational process models are available: joining theory, stage theory, and state theory. However, historically, these models have developed based on the knowledge and cultural context of the Western world. Several researchers note that national culture may have an impact on international industrial buyer-seller relationships. Including culture in the models is highly important, especially as the business environment is increasingly more global and different countries have different business cultures. The goal of this paper is to define the most suitable industrial buyer-seller relational process models for describing relationships in various contexts. The paper includes a through literature review and a single case study in order to reach this objective. A new state theory model evolved during the research. It consists of two beginning states: searching and starting; four purely middles states: constant/static, decline, growth, and troubled; and a purely end state: termination. The state of dormant/inert is both a middle state and an end state, that is, when the relational actors are not in contact does not mean that the relationship has ended, but instead, for example, new legislation may have been implemented, which requires the actors to evaluate their relationship and its future. A relationship goes through the two beginning states in the order mentioned above, but after that, any state may occur.

With its worldwide fame for making action films, Hong Kong cinema has been defined as masculine. Action films, including the costumed martial arts films and the modern gangster films, have been a major genre in Hong Kong cinema from the 1960s on. Despite the dominant masculinity, women still play significant roles in some of these films. In fact, fighting women leave footprints in the history of Hong Kong cinema, which precede their counterparts in the West and even provide models for Hollywood after 2000.

This chapter focuses on the female characters portrayed by the acclaimed Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose works have an ambiguous connection to mainstream genres. He modifies Hong Kong action films and creates unconventional female characters such as the drug dealer in Chungking Express (1994), the killer dispatcher in Fallen Angels (1995), the swordswoman in Ashes of Time (1994), and the kung fu master in The Grandmaster (2013). Wong's films have been mush discussed in academia, but the gender images therein are quite ignored. With high intertextuality, these characters are used to question mainstream action films and redefine women's roles in male's cinematic space. In addition, via the writing of these women, Wong constructs an open and ambivalent post-colonial Hong Kong identity. This paper contextualises the figures of sword-wielding and gun-shooting women and examines how Wong Kar-wai deploys these images to articulate the cultural identity of a post-colonial city.

Introduction: Media representation of intimate partner violence (IPV) can influence public opinion and understanding of the phenomena and guide health policies. The current review has the aim to explore and discuss international, scientific literature focused on the portrayal of IPV in written forms of news media.

Method: Searching through EBSCO and PubMed, 2,435 studies were found and 41 were included in the current review.

Results: Bias in the portrayal of IPV was found within the studies included. While IPV-related news was mainly focused on male-perpetrated violence within heterosexual couples, little attention was paid to same-sex intimate partner violence (SSIPV). Newsworthy stories dominate IPV reporting within news media and a sensationalistic style was often employed. Furthermore, contextual information was often limited and the adoption of a thematic frame was rare, while news media were found to commonly employ an episodic frame. Official sources and family, friends and neighbours were the most quoted sources in news articles, while IPV experts were rarely drawn on for information. Regarding media representation of perpetrators, mainly regarding male abusers, news articles reported several reasons behind the violence with the consequence to justify and exonerate them from their responsibilities. Female perpetrators were found to be depicted, in some cases, as ‘mad’ or ‘bad’ people. Finally, victim-blaming content emerged within many of the articles included.

Conclusion: Bias in the media representation of IPV emerged in the current review, which needs to be addressed to positively influence public opinion and to promote an adequate understanding of the phenomena.

This chapter examines how the breakthrough of Zhang Ziyi's depiction of a female kung fu master in The Grandmaster (2013) transforms the figure of the heroine in Chinese action films. Zhang is well known for her acting in action films conducted by renowned directors, such as Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai. After winning 12 different Best Actress awards for her portrayal of Gong Ruomei in The Grandmaster, Zhang announced that she would no longer perform in any action films to show her highest respect for the superlative character Gong. Tracing Zhang's transformational portrait of a heroine in The Grandmaster alongside her other action roles, this analysis demonstrates how her performance projects the directors' distinctive gender viewpoints. I argue that Zhang's characterisation of Gong remodels heroine-hood in Chinese action films. Inheriting the typical plot of a daughter's use of martial arts for revenge for her father's death, Gong breaks from conventional Chinese action films that highlight romantic love during a woman's adventure and the decisive final battle scene. Beyond the propensity for sensory stimulation, Gong's characterisation enables Zhang to determine that women can really act in action films – demonstrating their inner power and ability to create multi-layered characters – not merely relying upon physical action. This chapter offers a relational perspective of how women transform the action film genre not merely as gender spectacles but as embodied figures that represent emerging female subjectivity.

Purpose – This chapter aims to explore the strategies used by the Hong Kong government to respond to the adult worker model and the male-breadwinner model; and to explore the views of women on the desirability of these strategies. The male-breadwinner model posits that men work full-time outside the home and women take on domestic work. The adult worker model suggests that women and men should be equally expected to participate in formal employment.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter analyses the policy measures used by the Hong Kong government to support women in their participation in formal employment and the local work-based pension scheme (the Mandatory Provident Fund) as well as other policy measures that offer potential for enabling family care providers to accumulate resources for secure retirement. Additionally, it draws on semi-structured interviews with 30 Hong Kong young women to examine their views on the extent to which the government supports them to save pension incomes.

Findings – This study shows that the Hong Kong government uses a ‘weak action strategy’ to respond to the adult worker model and the male-breadwinner model, and that this strategy fails to meet women’s diverse preferences for their roles in the labour market and the family.

Originality/value – Based on a newly developed framework, this study examines the responses made by the government to both the male-breadwinner model and the adult worker model. It sheds new insights into possible ways of assisting women to achieve secure retirement .

The study addresses the mechanism of how cultural dimensions influence the different dimensions of emotional intelligence. Building on the cascading model described by Joseph and Newman (2010), we extend our previous findings (Gunkel, Schlaegel, & Engle, 2014) by exploring the influence of cultural dimensions on a cascading model of emotional intelligence.

We use survey data from 2,067 business students in nine countries (China, Colombia, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and the United States), representing 8 of the 11 cultural clusters identified by Ronen and Shenkar (2013).

We find that uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation have a positive influence on self-emotional appraisal, which in turn influence regulation of emotion, which then has a positive influence on the use of emotion. At the same time, others’ emotional appraisal mediates the relationship between all cultural dimensions except power distance and use of emotion. We also find that uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation directly influence the use of emotion, suggesting a partial mediation effect.

Our findings have to be interpreted in the light of the limitations of our approach owing to the cross-sectional study design and the limited generalizability of the sample.

We contribute to the existing literature by examining the mechanism through which culture influences the different facets of emotional intelligence and whether and how the different facets affect each other. The proposed influence of culture on a cascading model of emotional intelligence provides a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the mechanism and the pathways in which culture affects emotional intelligence.

In recent years, preparations for the transition from the Post-industrial society to Community 5.0 have been continuing at full speed. The change in this process necessitates changes in the roles and structure of the labour force in societies. While work and family living spaces of the individual change the dimensions of his/her interaction, they increase the importance of work–family life balance gradually. The basis of conflicts (imbalances) in roles in work and family life is based on three pillars: time, tension and behaviour. The conflicts in the work and family life spaces take place in two sub-dimensions, namely ‘work-family conflict’ which is directed from work to family and ‘family-work conflict’ which is directed from family to work. The conflict between work and family life leads to individual, organisational and familial consequences. Effective communication with the social support of the organisation and the members of family is of great importance for individuals not to experience a work–family conflict.

The side effects of disguised bribes are hidden by their apparent good consequences (as pseudo-gifts). The aim of the chapter is to unveil to what extent pseudo-gifts (as disguised bribes) could distort the cultural, social, and communicational functions of gift-giving practices. We will firstly describe how disguised bribes could be analyzed from a Sartrean perspective, given that Sartre’s notion of bad faith could help to better understand the three basic kinds of substantive loss which follow from disguised bribes: (a) the loss of commonalities (the cultural function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Malinowski’s notion of culture): we will analyze the phenomenon of guanxi; (b) the loss of social bonds (the social function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Durkheim’s notion of culture); (c) the loss of communicability, and the arising of an empty truth (the communicational function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Jaspers’ notion of truth claims). Gift-giving practices are culturally rooted. This is the first level of analysis (surface). Seizing the social and moral function of gift-giving practices unveils the second level of analysis (beneath-the-surface). Describing the communicational function of gift-giving practices opens the door to the third level of analysis (exchanges of truth claims). Bribery is the distortion of those basic functions of gift-giving practices. We are then facing an empty truth (the communicational function of culture is distorted).

Any concept of disguised bribes must be empirically tested. The way the cultural, social and communication functions of gift-giving practices are distorted could vary from one culture to another. Future research could check how such distortions arise in given societal cultures. It could then distinguish the side effects of disguised bribes, either from a cultural viewpoint, or from social perspective, or even from a communicational pattern of reference. Unveiling the multiple ways of distorting gift-giving practices could help decision-makers to better understand the frontiers between bribery and gift-giving. Emphasizing the various functions of gift-giving practices, from a philosophical and sociological perspective, could allow business decision-makers to raise their ethical awareness.

Literature has identified possible factors to entrepreneurial behaviour, including some antecedents of entrepreneurship intention among university students. This study stresses on the field of study and the attendance of an entrepreneurship course as moderators for such intention. Following the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the study compares the results of a survey with a sample of 220 students, conducted in two universities, one public and one private, the latter teaching an entrepreneurship course.

The authors found that (1) Ajzen’s TPB predicted entrepreneurial intention; (2) different field of studies show significant difference on entrepreneurial intention; (3) family and/or friends influence is associated with higher entrepreneurial intention, attitude and perceived behaviour control; (4) the intention to attend an entrepreneurship course is strongly associated with entrepreneurial intention; and (5) however, business-related studies and men do not indicate higher intention to take entrepreneurship course, contradicting previous studies.

The results open further topics for discussions that can be researched with qualitative studies, such as the reason why students who take entrepreneurship course do not predict higher entrepreneurial intention. Meanwhile the intention to attend an entrepreneurship course is associated with entrepreneurial intention.