Search results

This study aims to define a “technological statecraft” concept to distinguish tech-based measures/sanctions from an array of economic measures ranging from restrictions of rare earth elements and natural gas supplies to asset freezes under the wider portfolio of economic statecraft. This concept is practically intended to reveal the USA’s “logic of choice” in its employment of technology as an efficient instrument to deal with China in the context of the great power rivalry.

This study follows David A. Baldwin’s statecraft definition and conceptualization methodology, which relies on “means” rather than “ends.” In addition to Baldwin and as an incremental contribution to his economic statecraft analysis, this study also combines national political economy with statecraft analysis with a particular focus on the utilization of technological measures against China during the Trump administration.

The US rationale for choosing technology, namely, emerging and foundational technologies, in its rivalry against China is caused at least by two factors: the nature of the external challenge and the characteristics of the US innovation model based largely on radical innovations. To deal with China, the USA practically distinguished the role of advanced technology and followed a grammer of technological statecraft as depicted in the promulgated legal texts during the Trump administration.

Despite a growing volume of literature on economic statecraft and technological competition, studies focusing on countries’ “logic of choice” with regard to why and under what conditions they choose financial, technological or commodity-based sanctions/measures/controls are lacking. Inspired from Baldwin’s account on the “logic of choice” from among alternative statecrafts (i.e. diplomacy, military, economic statecraft, and propaganda). This study will contribute to the literature with a clear lens to demonstrate the “logic of choice” from among a variety of economic statecraft measures in the case of the US technological statecraft toward China.

In the 21st century, libraries are experiencing a significant decline in users due to shifting reading habits and the impact of technology, necessitating library transformation and a heightened emphasis on library marketing. Special libraries, in particular, rely heavily on patrons for survival, often due to their private ownership and limited resources. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.

This paper examines the Taste Library, a special library in Hong Kong, and analyzes its current practices based on an interview with its founder, website content, and social media presence. The 7Ps Marketing Mix model is employed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the library's current market position.

The Taste Library's existing practices exhibit limitations in attracting young patrons. To address this issue, we propose marketing strategies focused on enhancing social network presence, offering digitized content, and engaging in school outreach.

By concentrating on youth marketing, this study offers valuable insights for special libraries in developing strategic plans for transitioning and maintaining sustainability.

Few studies concentrate on marketing small special libraries, particularly in the East, within today's digitized economy.

This study aims to establish an evaluation method for cross-regional major infrastructure project (CRMIP) supportability. The focus is to identify evaluation indicators from a complexity perspective and develop an evaluation model using qualitative and quantitative methods. Case studies are carried out to verify the reliability of the evaluation model, thereby providing theoretical and practical guidance for CRMIP operations and maintenance (O&M).

Guided by the idea of complexity management, the evaluation indicators of CRMIP supportability are determined through literature analysis, actual O&M experience and expert interviews. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, consisting of sequential relationship analysis, entropy weighting, game theory and cloud model, is developed to determine the indicator weights. Finally, the evaluation model is used to evaluate the supportability of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge (HZMB), which tests the rationality of the model and reveals its supportability level.

The results demonstrate that CRMIPs' supportability is influenced by 6 guideline-level and 18 indicator-level indicators, and the priority of the influencing factors includes “organization,” “technology,” “system,” “human resources,” “material system,” and “funding.” As for specific indicators, “organizational objectives,” “organizational structure and synergy mechanism,” and “technical systems and procedures” are critical to CRMIPs' O&M supportability. The results also indicate that the supportability level of the HZMB falls between good and excellent.

Under the guidance of complexity management thinking, this study proposes a supportability evaluation framework based on the combined weights of game theory and the cloud model. This study provides a valuable reference and scientific judgment for the health and safety of CRMIPs' O&M.

The study aims to investigate the characteristics of the current situation of library programs and explore the possible reasons behind the low participation in Hong Kong. It focuses on the development of library programs in the era of digital technology, which can lead to discussion and reflections on the further development of library programs with innovative technology services.

This study applied a mixed-method research approach to investigate the current situation of library programming and the reasons for low participation in Hong Kong. The first part analyzes the characteristics of library programs offered by the Hong Kong Public Libraries (HKPL) through data collection from the HKPL website. The second part of this study investigated the reasons behind the low participation in library programs through quantitative research through an online survey.

The findings show that current library programs were dominated by reading activities and children's programs to a great extent, which both users and non-users are not very interested in. Further, most respondents expressed more interest in cultural and leisure events and hands-on activities (especially new technologies related) than traditional library programming. Many lapsed and non-users chose not to attend the library programs for boredom and uselessness. As a result, there is a need for HKPL to adjust its services to stay relevant to the needs and interests of local communities.

Scant studies explored the reasons behind non-users of public library programs, especially in Asia. This research contributes to the literature by analyzing and proposing the characteristics of the current situation of library programs and exploring the possible reasons behind the low participation in Hong Kong.

This study aims to explore the innovation deployment of construction contracting firms through exploratory–exploitative learning and organisational ambidexterity.

Firstly, a literature-based conceptual framework was developed to explain innovation implementation through exploratory–exploitative learning and organisational ambidexterity. A prominent Hong Kong construction contracting firm was then selected as the case study to explore its innovation deployment at different organisational levels (i.e. firm and project levels). Qualitative data were attained by conducting 12 semi-structured interviews with industry experts and document analysis. The thematic analysis using NVivo 12 software was adopted to analyse data.

Findings reveal that the case study firm successfully fosters innovation when ambidexterity is achieved through the balance between exploratory (i.e. radical innovation) and exploitative learnings (i.e. incremental innovation).

Establishing uniform ambidexterity (i.e. 50:50) at the firm or project level is not mandatory to deploy innovation successfully. The ratio can vary based on the characteristics and requirements of construction firms.

This paper shall motivate construction practitioners to adopt radical–incremental innovation ambidexterity in firms and ultimately enhance the productivity and efficiency of the construction industry.

Previous construction innovation research has frequently explored firm or project-level innovation separately. This study identified a multi-level focus on innovation. Through the lens of exploratory–exploitative theory, different forms of innovation ambidexterity for different levels are suggested rather than one specific ambidexterity.

This research investigates Hong Kong academic librarians' attitudes toward robotic process automation (RPA) and their willingness to learn this technology.

This qualitative study collected data through one-on-one semi-structured interviews conducted with video conferencing software. After participants received basic RPA information and three existing library application cases, they answered questions based on the interview guide. This research used the inductive thematic analysis method to analyze the collected data.

Regarding Hong Kong academic librarians' attitudes towards RPA, 19 themes were identified. Although all participants did not have previous knowledge of RPA, most showed positive attitudes toward implementing RPA in their libraries and some willingness to learn it. Besides, among all identified themes, negative attitudes mainly comprised “Affect” and “Cognition” factors, hindering RPA deployment in academic libraries.

This research helps librarians and RPA vendors make better decisions or strategies for implementing RPA for libraries, which has not been explored, especially in East Asia.

With the increasing computation and communication speed of mobile devices, their use and roles have been repositioned to act more than a communication tool. Around 0.4 million foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) form an integral part of Hong Kong society and have the highest concentrations of FDHs worldwide, but scant studies focus on their mobile technology usage. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

This research investigated mobile technology usage by 145 FDHs in Hong Kong with a quantitative survey, covering their actual mobile technology usage, perceptions, influences and adoption barriers.

Besides communication and connection with friends and family, participants used mobile technology for information seeking, productivity, utility and entertainment. Perception of usefulness was the greatest influence, and they would use any mobile technology once its basic function supports their daily needs. They considered no “very serious barrier,” though data tariff was their biggest concern. Overall, there were some significant differences between genders in the usage of mobile technologies.

Scant studies focus on the mobile technology usage of FDHs. The results reveal the usefulness of mobile technologies to FDHs for government policy-making and for employers and employment agencies to better support the FHDs' daily lives.

Drawing on bargaining power and the inequality aversion perspective, this study aims to probe employees’ influence on addressing income inequality between top executives and nonexecutive employees. Meanwhile, it examines the moderating role of employee-related factors and plan attributes.

This study uses a staggered difference-in-differences design with a propensity scoring match approach and verification of the parallel trend assumption to test the hypotheses.

The results support the hypothesis that employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) significantly reduce within-firm income inequality. The negative effect is amplified by both the presence of trade unions and the unemployment rate at the regional level, as well as the duration of the lock-in period and the scale of participants within the stock ownership plan.

This study has implications for income inequality research and ESOP design and provides theoretical support for policymakers and corporate governance.

This study contributes to the literature on income inequality by examining the implementation of ESOPs from the employee perspective. Furthermore, it extends the current literature by investigating the strengthening effects of regional factors and ESOP attributes on the relationship between ESOPs and income inequality. The conclusions provide new empirical evidence to promote the effective implementation of ESOPs by combining internal and external factors.

The increasing popularity of immersive activities (e.g. immersive performing art (IPA) at tourism destinations calls for the need to understand customers’ immersive experiences and its impact on their attitudes and behavioral intentions. This study aims to conceptualize customers’ interactive experience in IPA and systematically examine how interaction in IPA experience shapes customers’ word-of-mouth (WOM) intention and thus generates business values for destination managers.

A two-step mixed-methods approach was used. The qualitative study was adopted to identify the salient dimensions of interaction in IPA experience and develop a context-specific measurement scale. Structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the theoretical model using partial least squares 3.3.0.

The results indicated that the three dimensions of interaction in IPA experience (i.e. parasocial interaction, narrative interaction and environmental interaction) are positively related to customers’ experiences of narrative transportation and self-expansion related to the IPA, which further influence their WOM intention.

This study considers IPA as an emerging form of immersive tourism activities and conceptualizes its interactive nature, and contributes to the understanding of how customers’ interactive experience helps them construct meanings through narrative transportation, and offers valuable guidance for IPA designers and destination management organizations.

Given the growing concern about employees' well-being, numerous researchers have investigated the causes and effects of occupational stress. However, a review study on identifying existing research topics and gaps is still deficient in the extant literature. To fill this gap, this review study aims to present a bibliometric and science mapping approach to review the state-of-the-art journal articles published on occupational stress in the construction industry.

A three-fold comprehensive review approach consisting of bibliometric review, scientometric analysis and in-depth qualitative discussion was employed to review 80 journal articles in Scopus.

Through qualitative discussions, mainstream research topics were summarized, research gaps were identified and future research directions were proposed as follows: versatile stressors and stress model; an extended subgroup of factors in safety behavior; adaptation of multiple biosensors and bio-feedbacks; evaluation and comparison of organizational stress interventions; and incorporation of artificial intelligence and smart technologies into occupational stress management in construction.

The findings of this review study present a well-rounded framework to identify the research gaps in this field to advance research in the academic community and enhance employees' well-being in construction.