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This study aims to examine the mediating role of organisational fairness on the association between the emphasis on budgets and budget difficulty with budget value and job stress. Data were collected using an online survey questionnaire with 515 responses from middle and lower-level managers in Australian business organisations. The results indicate that organisational fairness fully mediates the association between budget difficulty with both budget value and job stress. Organisational fairness was not found to mediate the association between the emphasis on budgets with budget value and job stress. Rather, the emphasis on budgets was significantly negatively associated with job stress, implying that a greater emphasis on budgets is desirable in alleviating job stress. The findings have important implications for practice.

This article assesses pronatalism in the non-industrialized Caribbean in light of contributions that children make to household production. The place that the economic utility of children has in determining pronatal attitudes and behavior has been increasingly neglected by social scientists. This trend is especially unwarranted in regard to the traditional Caribbean. As an example, it is shown that the primary reason farmers in Jean Rabel, Haiti, are in favor of high birth rates and reject contraceptives is because the farmers conceptualize children as necessary to their economic survival.

International marketing is an important topic in business education. However, the traditional lecture class is viewed as inadequate in delivering the topic because of its passive learning style and lack of realism. In this research we examine the effectiveness of an alternative approach to teaching international marketing that emphasizes experiential learning. The results of an empirical investigation show that experiential learning provides the students with better benefits on acquiring various skills and competences in international marketing. The findings shed light on how to invigorate business education with innovative alternatives.

Street closure following an earthquake makes life-saving and rescue work more difficult, especially in congested urban areas. After the great Chi-chi earthquake, recovery and reconstruction work became necessary. In particular, we have to investigate the street network damages and other effects. Considering the road improvement plan, not only malfunction recovery but also a comprehensive evaluation should be considered in future urban planning. The reliable street network against earthquakes is the central concern of this survey.

This study attempts to implement a case study survey of damaged areas, and analyze the effecting factors on street closure. We also try to evaluate the road function against earthquake integrated with the street-damaged characteristics. Using a discriminant model of street closure, some design guidelines for future transportation planning decisions are proposed.

Nan-tou City network has 365 links and 66.6% of them are less than 6 meters in width. Ton-shi Town network has 248 links and 35% of them are less than 6 meters in width. The same definition of street closure (impassable by vehicles) of ‘street width less than 4 meters’ was applied to these two case studies. This research considered several street network alternatives, the inaccessible nodes for all alternatives and analysis in order to determine a more reliable street network for increased safety. Results of both surveyed areas suggest that when we decrease the interval distance of the 8-M street, the percentage of the differences of inaccessible nodes will also decrease.

The Chi-chi earthquake did great harm in the disaster area. Fortunately we find the street damages of our surveying area were not too severe to maintain their functions in times of earthquake. However, it is still meaningful for a transport planner to evaluate the reliability of residential streets because the main target of planning a residential street network is to restrain through-traffic in this area to ensure safe and comfortable conditions for pedestrians while meeting residential access requirements.

In this chapter, we utilize qualitative and quantitative data from a yearlong study in four urban Chinese middle schools to investigate the learning environments for girls at these schools; the behavior and performance of girls and boys in these environments; and what factors impact that behavior and performance. This study particularly focuses on socialization through moral education and the examination system as two sources of authority motivating students’ behavior and performance in school. In the analysis, girls attending three co-educational schools are compared with girls attending one single-sex school, and outcomes for girls are also considered alongside those of boys in the co-educational institutions. Findings indicate that although moral education is particularly emphasized by teachers at the all-girls school, female misbehavior and engagement with teachers is no different for girls attending the single-sex school compared to girls in co-educational schools. Furthermore, differences in outcomes between females and males across schools transcend school-level differences for misbehavior and engagement. However, at the same time, girls at all co-educational schools report higher Chinese and English grades compared to their math and science grades, whereas all-girls school students report no such differences in grades. In regression analysis, socialization variables appear to explain more about students’ misbehavior, whereas the desire to progress to higher levels of schooling explains more about grades and engagement with teachers. That said, socialization variables including moral attitude and attachment to teachers matter more for girls’ math and science grades and their engagement with teachers as compared to boys. This research provides a rare comparative look at education for urban Chinese students and offers new insights about what matters most for girls’ behavior and performance in school.

The goal of this chapter is to respond to the theoretical inquiries by scholars who are interested in how the public–private partnership (PPP) models adapt to China’s context where political power dictates economic strategies. We also want to provide suggestions to policy designers who aim to promote a sustainable investment environment for domestic and international investors. We review the literature that explains the upside and downside of PPP projects in contemporary China. (1) We classify the trajectory of PPP evolution into four phases, i.e., emergence, growth, recession and revival. (2) We note that private companies take a disadvantageous position in the partnership compared with governments and state-owned enterprises because of a lack of specialized legislation, unequal competition between private companies and state-owned enterprises and the opposition from the civic society. (3) We identify political risks as the most influential risks. Political risks also lead to the misallocation of other risks between public and private parties that contributes to the high failure rate of China’s PPP projects. Based on these findings, we recommend governments to draft specialized legislation, stabilize the political environment and provide favourable subsidies to local governments to limit the risks involved in PPP projects. We also advise private enterprises and state-owned enterprises to focus on negotiating over task and risk division with governments when they make decisions to participate in PPP projects. This full review of studies on PPP development in China provides reliable recommendations to scholars, governments and enterprises.