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The field of special education in Thailand is still in its infancy. This chapter provides a retrospect on special education in Thailand reflecting societal attitudes toward people with disabilities from the past to present. It also provides a list of factors impacting this population and members of the community who are involved with their lives. Special education law, definitions of various disability categories, types of educational settings, as well as issues and challenges in the field are discussed. A critical analysis of special education teacher preparation is also provided. Finally, recommendations and conclusions are offered.

This study examines the relationship of personality characteristics to drug treatment effectiveness for prison releasees. Prison releasees from two drug treatment programs (an out‐patient setting and a therapeutic community setting) are compared with each other and to releasees from a comparison group. Treatment success is measured 6 months after release from prison in terms of 1) abstinence of illicit drug use and 2) lack of recidivism. The data are analyzed using logistic regression with demographic, criminal history, past drug use, psychological, and treatment measures included in the equations. Findings suggest that several personality dimensions are related to treatment effectiveness, sometimes in unexpected ways. The findings also reveal that different personality characteristics are associated with each of the two measures of treatment success. The results are discussed in terms of policy implications for treatment programs.

The Center for Women’s Business Research estimates women are now the majority owners in 6.7 million privately held businesses in the United States and equal owners in another 4.0 million firms. When part owners in multiple businesses are included the female ownership total climbs to an estimated 15.6 million businesses. Women majority owners account for nearly half (48 per cent) of the privately‐held firms in the United States. Their businesses generate $2.46 trillion in sales. They employ 19.1 million people and spend an estimated $492 billion on salaries and $54 billion on employee benefits. The number of women‐owned firms increases at twice the rate of all new firms (14 per cent versus 7 per cent) and the number of employees nearly as fast (30 per cent versus 18 per cent). Women owners are rapidly moving into all industries, with the fastest growth percentages in the fields of construction (30 per cent), transportation, communications and public utilities (28 per cent) and agricultural services (24 per cent). Worldwide, with women entrepreneurs in under developed countries leading the way, women‐owned firms now comprise between one‐fourth and one‐third of all businesses. Given the numbers, it would be almost impossible to overestimate the impact of women owned businesses in today’s global economy.

This study aims to highlight the impact of altruistic-self and hunger awareness on socially responsible food consumption through the lens of self-awareness and self-congruity theories due to the great challenge of Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 812 respondents. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirm each variable's structure through the measurement model and test the hypothesis to support a structural model.

The results highlight that the combination of altruistic-self and hunger awareness (AS-HA congruence) drives consumers to execute socially responsible food consumption. Meanwhile, consumers' food-saving attitude mediation translates to the attitude towards responsible and ethical use increasing socially responsible food consumption, a contextual development in the theory of congruence. Conversely, hunger awareness is not confirmed as significantly influencing socially responsible food consumption.

This research provides valuable insights for academicians and practitioners in developing food waste management strategies that can be implemented to reduce food wastage.

Food waste is a global concern and is challenging for many manufacturing, distribution and individual wastage levels. However, food wastage by consumers is one of the most critical problems which can be minimised with awareness and attitudinal changes in behaviour as a form of socially responsible consumption.

This paper addresses the issue of service quality evaluation within the higher education sector and stresses the need to develop measures that are both psychometrically and practically sound. The paper argues that recent debate surrounding the development of such measures has been too strongly geared toward their psychometric performance, with little regard for their practical value. While the paper supports the need to develop valid, reliable and replicable measures of service quality, it is suggested that educators must not lose sight of the original purpose for which these measures were designed, i.e. their practical value in informing continuous quality improvement efforts. It critiques the use of disconfirmation models and reports on a study of students’ perceptions of quality using importance‐performance analysis (IPA). The technique allows specific failings in the quality of support issues to be identified and their importance to a quality improvement programme assessed.

This study aims to determine the moderating role of trust on the influence of export incentives over importer role performance. The mediating role of importer role performance and the impact of export incentives on exporter performance have also been investigated.

This study used survey as the main data collection method to obtain data from 105 executives of exporting firms. An official database of export firms was provided to this study by the Department of Export Promotion, Ministry of Commerce of Thailand.

Significant partial moderation effect of trust on the impact of export incentives over importer role performance has been seen. Also, this study found a partial mediating role of the importer role performance in mediating the association of export incentives and exporter performance. In addition, export incentives in the form of credible channel policies and price and financial incentives have been found to have a significant positive effect on importer role performance.

This study will be of practical value for practitioners or managers of export firms because it is essential to enhance trust with importers and select the appropriate export incentives for importers. This could enhance competitiveness of the export firms.

This is an original attempt to investigate the role of trust as moderator in influencing the impact of export incentives on importer role performance. Also, this study initially ascertains the mediating effect of importer role performance in mediating the effectiveness of both monetary and non-monetary incentives on exporter performance.

This article assesses gender‐related differences in rural enterprises and examines implications for development of economic policy and services in a rural district of Sweden. The article focuses on female owned micro enterprises. A quantitative and qualitative survey of 32 micro enterprise owners was carried out. Focus was on owner attitudes toward local governmental policies and programmes. There were not strong differences between genders for items using multiple‐choice responses. Where qualitative, written responses were solicited there were some differences in perceptions and attitudes. The female respondents tended to write more and respond in ways that suggest that they tend to reflect more upon the future and new possibilites. Differences in style of operation were evident; others have reported this. Written responses from female participants described in greater detail and more clearly the ongoing need for governmental support of networking activities and other programmes that promote cooperation and resource pooling (regardless of gender).

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for assessing the lean construction management performance (LCMP) of engineering projects using the analytic network process-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (ANP-FCE) model.

Literature review and questionnaire surveys were used to achieve an evaluation index system for LCMP. The data needed to calculate the weights of the indices were derived from questionnaire surveys. The ANP and the Super Decisions (SD) software were used to calculate the weights of the indices and verify the validity of the weights. The FCE was adopted to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of LCMP, and the validity of the evaluation results was verified by applying the validity degree of maximum membership principle. The applicability of the method for evaluating LCMP was validated by empirical research.

The proposed method for assessing the LCMP using the ANP-FCE model is validated to be feasible. Decision makers can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of lean construction (LC) management of the evaluated project from the evaluation results.

Some subjectivity may exist in the assessment process due to questionnaire surveys, and only one case has been studied to validate the applicability of the method. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to increase the number of LC experts and cases over the world to make the proposed method more standard.

The research is expected to propose an assessment method of LCMP for construction enterprises, provide a reference to develop assessment standards for LCMP for building associations or governments and help decision makers know the improving path of LC management.

This research contributes to the literature by summarizing the commonly used lean management tools for quality, cost, time, safety and organization in practice, and proposing a novel approach for assessing the LCMP of engineering projects. The study is useful for researchers, project managers and decision makers engaged in LC.