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Purpose and approach – We examine theoretically and experimentally how unequal abilities to contribute affect incentives and efficiency when players compete for membership in stratified groups based on the contributions they make. Players have either a low or a high endowment. Once assigned to a group based on their group contribution, players share equally in their group’s collective output. Depending on the parameters, the mechanism has several distinct equilibria that differ in efficiency.

Findings – Somewhat counter to conventional expectation our theoretical analysis indicates that as long as certain assumptions are satisfied, efficiency increases rather than decreases the more abilities to contribute differ. The analysis also suggests various follow-up experiments about equilibrium selection, tacit coordination, and the effect of unequal abilities in systems with endogenous grouping. We conduct an experiment that shows that subjects tacitly coordinate the mechanism’s asymmetric payoff-dominant equilibrium with precision; this precision is robust to a change in the structure and complexity of the game.

Implications – The results suggest that people respond to merit-based grouping in a natural way and that competitive contribution-based grouping encourages public contributions even when abilities to contribute differ, which is the case in all communities and societies.

The aim of this work was to investigate how Andrographis paniculata (Burm.f.) Wall.ex Nees extract affected the corrosion of low-carbon (C) steel in 0.1M HCl.

The Andrographis paniculata (Burm.f.) Wall.ex Nees was extracted into distilled water at 70°C for 1 h. The corrosion inhibition efficiency of the extract was determined in 0.1M HCl using weight loss measurements, potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The effects of extract concentrations and of temperature were investigated.

The Andrographis paniculata (Burm.f.) Wall.ex Nees extract could inhibit the corrosion process of low-C steel in 0.1M HCl. With the extract concentration of 1 g/l, an inhibition efficiency of 96.3 per cent was obtained. The extract acted as an anodic inhibitor. The adsorption process of the extract was physisorption and it followed the Langmuir adsorption isotherm.

This paper revealed that Andrographis paniculata (Burm.f.) Wall.ex Nees cultivated in Thailand, which was extracted using a simple and environmentally friendly method, could act as a very good green corrosion inhibitor for low-C steel in 0.1M HCl solution.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of applying sustainability to the engineering curriculum at a university in China.

A new curriculum, “ethics, involvement and sustainability,” was designed and presented to engineering students from an undergraduate major in quality management engineering. This curriculum incorporated knowledge acquisition and skills training into sustainability via various teaching approaches in a mandatory curriculum at Tongling University, China. Pre- and post-questionnaire surveys, as well as a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, were adopted to evaluate the changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of respondents before and after curriculum implementation.

Significant changes in knowledge and attitudes were observed following the implementation of the curriculum. In terms of the development of new behaviors, the changes tended to be moderate. Generally, respondents were satisfied with the effectiveness of the new interdisciplinary curriculum post-implementation.

Positive results were observed for the pilot and practice of the new engineering education (NEE) strategy at the cooperating university in China. Specifically, the integration of sustainability into curriculum design, implementation and evaluation inspired greater social responsibility in engineering students’ decision-making processes. Additionally, it shed light on how to integrate the concept of sustainability into curricula. One limitation of this study was the absence of a comparison group that did not experience the new curriculum.

Scant attention has been paid to local universities in the context of the newly-launched NEE strategy. This study provides new insight regarding the implementation of sustainability into engineering curricula and practice via formal, but diversified, teaching approaches.

Empirical studies show substantial variation across immigrants in the rate and direction of assimilation along various dimensions (e.g., cross-ethnic contact, language, identity). To explain this variation, past research has focused on identifying exogenous factors, such as discrimination, human capital, and settlement intention. In this chapter we argue that variation in immigrant outcomes emerges endogenously through positive interaction effects between dimensions of assimilation. We propose a new assimilation model in which processes of social influence and selection into congruent social environments give rise to multiple long-term equilibria. In this model, migrants who are already assimilated along many dimensions tend to also adapt along other dimensions, while less assimilated migrants become more strongly embedded in their ethnic group.

To test the assimilation model, we derive a number of hypotheses, which we evaluate using trend analysis and dynamic panel regression on data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada.

The data mostly confirm the hypotheses, providing overall support for the assimilation model.

Our theory and findings suggest that immigrants would follow divergent assimilation trajectories even in the absence of a priori population heterogeneity in external factors.

The positive interaction effects between cultural and structural dimensions of assimilation suggest that mixed policies that promote integration while seeking to prevent loss of identity go against the natural tendency for cultural and structural assimilation to go hand in hand.

The present chapter proposes a novel model of immigrant assimilation and an empirical test.

Market transition theory has specified general mechanisms to explain change in the balance of power between political and economic actors in transition economies. These mechanisms drive the endogenous construction of informal institutions of a market society; moreover, it is within the context of an ongoing change in relative power that the formal institutions of the emerging market economy arise. The theory makes clear predictions on the declining value of political capital as a consequence of progressive marketization, which incrementally results in transformative change in the direction of more relative autonomy between the political and economic spheres, not dissimilar from established market economies (Kornai, 1995; Evans, 1995; Nee, 2000; Lindenberg, 2000; Ricketts, 2000). In sum, the predicted change in relative power between redistributors and producers explains not only bottom-up entrepreneurial activity, but also the emergence of a market economy in departures from state socialism.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the work of Carnegie and Walker and report the results of Part 2 of their study on household accounting in Australia during the period from the 1820s to the 1960s.

The study adopts a microhistorical approach involving a detailed examination of actual accounting practices in the Australian home based on 18 sets of surviving household records identified as exemplars and supplemented by other sources which permit their contextualisation and interpretation.

The findings point to considerable variety in the accounting practices pursued by individuals and families. Household accounting in Australia was undertaken by both women and men of the middle and landed classes whose surviving household accounts were generally found to comprise one element of diverse and comprehensive personal record keeping systems. The findings indicate points of convergence and divergence in relation to the contemporary prescriptive literature and practice.

The paper reflects on the implications of the findings for the notion of the household as a unit of consumption as opposed to production, gender differences in accounting practice and financial responsibility, the relationship between changes in the life course and the commencement and cessation of household accounting, and the relationship between domestic accounting practice and social class.

This empirical study conceptualizes the institutional environment within which firms function in a transition economy as a number of dimensions, representing the externally set ‘rules of the game’ as perceived by senior managers. It then proposes a mediating model of the links between that environment and the commercial performance of enterprises in which incentive intensity is a key strategic choice, influenced by perceptions of the institutional setting and the influence of that choice is carried on to commercial performance by a set of managerial orientations. The model is tested using survey data from a sample of 959 Chinese enterprises.

In the UK, management consultancy is a £2 billion per annum business sector. Major consultancy firms are global or European enterprises which match and perhaps lead the emerging global or regional nature of markets. Yet little is known about these agencies of change, these intelligence networks which have come to play such a significant, perhaps pivotal role in organizational and management development. Part I of this two‐part article presents the role of management consultancy in the context of a knowledge typology – and reports on some of the findings of a preliminary research project.

Sarcasm is often used in everyday speech and writing and is prevalent in online contexts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the analogy between sarcasm comments from sentiment tools and the human coder.

Using the Verbal Irony Procedure, eight human coders were engaged to analyse comments collected from an online commercial page, and a dissimilarity analysis was conducted with sentiment tools. Three constants were tested, namely, polarity from sentiment tools, polarity rating by human coders; and sarcasm-level ratings by human coders.

Results found an inconsistent ratio between these three constants. Sentiment tools used did not have the capability or reliability to detect the subtle, contextualized meanings of sarcasm statements that human coders could detect. Further research is required to refine the sentiment tools to enhance their sensitivity and capability.

With these findings, it is recommended that further research and commercialization efforts be directed at improving current sentiment tools – for example, to incorporate sophisticated human sarcasm texts in their analytical systems. Sarcasm exists frequently in media, politics and human forms of communications in society. Therefore, more highly sophisticated sentiment tools with the abilities to detect human sarcasm would be vital in research and industry.

The findings suggest that presently, of the sentiment tools investigated, most are still unable to pick up subtle contexts within the text which can reverse or change the message that the writer intends to send to his/her receiver. Hence, the use of the relevant hashtags (e.g. #sarcasm; #irony) are of fundamental importance in detection tools. This would aid the evaluation of product reviews online for commercial usage.

The value of this study lies in its original, empirical findings on the inconsistencies between sentiment tools and human coders in sarcasm detection. The current study proves these inconsistencies are detected between human and sentiment tools in social media texts and points to the inadequacies of current sentiment tools. With these findings, it is recommended that further research and commercialization efforts be directed at improving current sentiment tools – to incorporate sophisticated human sarcasm texts in their analytical systems. The system can then be used as a reference for psychologists, media analysts, researchers and speech writers to detect cues in the inconsistencies in behaviour and language.

This paper aims to present findings based on the psychological profile of 17 offenders who have been convicted of occupational fraud, bribery or related offences. It provides findings on their specific psychological profiles using well-established psychological techniques to gauge personality. The study is also aimed to provide the foundations for further research on such profiles, which could eventually provide a screening tool to identify individuals who might be a higher risk of engaging in corrupt behaviours for organisations.

The research is based upon 17 interviews with white-collar offenders who were also asked to complete an Eysenck Personality Questionnaire to identify their profile.

This study postulates that sensation seeking, risk appetite, impulsivity and lower non-aggressive self-regulation dominate the E scale traits of white-collar offenders.

This paper is very much original in its design with few studies having been performed in this area.