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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the policy instruments used by the China's Government on prefabricated construction (PC) development, with the aim to clarify the pattern and discover the focus of the policy instruments using the methods of bibliometric analysis and content analysis.

Through a thorough screening by all researchers, 25 policies were identified from 1995 to 2021 were selected and analysed. The external attribute analysis clarified the issuing year, organisation, and the format of each policy. The content analysis was adopted firstly to analyse the policy instrument. An analysis framework including environmental instruments, supply instruments and demand instruments was applied in categorising and counting of each policy instrument. The bibliometric analysis was then carried out to extract keywords of the policy instruments, construct a co-word network and complete the cluster analysis.

The results indicate that the policies lack consistency and had relatively low authority. The results of content analysis show that the policy system relies heavily on environmental and supply instruments, whilst the use of demand instruments seems to be grossly inadequate. The results of the bibliometric analysis identify the core ideas of each policy instrument category, discuss the existing problems and then put forward the corresponding countermeasures.

This study comprehensively and systematically analysed the policy instruments on facilitating the development of PC in China which broaden the research perspectives of the PC development by introducing the methods of political science. The research findings afford helpful information for future policy adjustments and elucidate the effective delivery of policies to facilitate PC development for developing countries.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of policy instruments used by China's Government on PC development. By integrating the policy instrument analysis framework into the mixed methods of content analysis and bibliometric analysis, this study provides an innovative way to conduct policy instrument analysis.

Young adults are living and working in uncertain economic climates and increasingly exposed to precarious work. Are preferences for job security and actual job stability a result of proximal conditions, or do experiences in adolescence also play a role? The adolescent’s environment and experiences may help explain differences in preferences with regards to stable work, as well as work outcomes in early adulthood.

In this chapter, I use data from the Youth Development Study (YDS) to test three facets of the adolescent experience between ages 14 and 18 – parental work and educational characteristics, adolescents’ academic achievement, and youth employment – as factors shaping (1) respondents’ preferences for stable employment, (2) respondents’ perceived job insecurity, and (3) respondents’ likelihood of being in nonstandard work in early adulthood, age 31–32, approximately 15 years later.

Adolescent experiences and environments are related to young adults’ preferences for stable employment, likelihood of being in nonstandard work, and likelihood of reporting job insecurity in early adulthood, suggesting the significance of early life experiences as well as the importance of intergenerational transmission processes for the early adult years.

This study points to the important role of adolescent experiences in initiating a trajectory of work preferences and attainment.

The search for an easily installed, practicable and inexpensive information retrieval system continues unabated. This is reflected in the Aslib Library almost daily by requests for advice on the feasibility of installing this or that system, or for information on what systems are available in Great Britain. Study of the following bibliography, which covers only a narrow selection of information retrieval systems, will reveal that much original thought has been producing concrete results in this country. In fact, one of the earliest references is to a paper given at the twenty‐second Aslib Conference in 1947 by W. E. Batten, in which he describes his development of an ‘aspect’ card system—more often referred to today as ‘Peek‐a‐boo’ or ‘feature’ cards. Mr C. W. Cleverdon's Cranfield project is also adding considerable knowledge on the use of various indexing methods, including Uniterm.

A work orientation represents a person’s beliefs about the meaning of work – the function work plays in the person’s life and the constellation of values and assumptions the person holds about the work domain. Research has suggested that adults tend to favor one of three primary work orientations: job, career, or calling. Empirical studies have shown that adults with different primary work orientations tend to experience different work and career outcomes; however, scholars have not analyzed how or why an individual first develops a work orientation. In this study, we take a first step toward investigating the origins of adults’ work orientations.

We propose hypotheses drawing on extant literature on the development of work values and occupational inheritance. We test hypotheses using a retrospective research design and survey methodology, with a sample of working adults.

Work orientations are developed through socialization processes with parents during adolescence. There are different patterns of development across the three work orientation categories: stronger calling orientations are developed when both parents possess strong calling orientations; stronger career orientations develop in accordance with fathers’ career orientations; and job orientations are related more to the nature of the adolescent’s relationship with parents than with parents’ own work orientations.

This research provides the first empirical study of the origin and development of work orientations.

This research offers insight into ways generations are connected through the perceived meaning of their work, even as the nature of work changes. We encourage future scholars to use this as a starting point for research on the development of work orientations, and to continue exploring these questions using additional methods, particularly longitudinal study designs.

It may be noted with great satisfaction that the Local Government Board has considered the question of, and examined as far as possible in all its bearings—chemical, hygienic, and commercial—the processes of bleaching flour by chemical means, and of the addition to flour of foreign substances that are euphemistically referred to by certain persons as “improvers.”

Theories of income inequality frequently cite child and adolescent labor as a societal problem. In contrast to such theories, we propose that path dependency coupled with enhancement of human and social capital enables some adolescents who work to find more attractive jobs later in life.

Using the longitudinal Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) spanning over 10 years, we find support for a positive relationship between adolescents’ number of work hours and future desirable professional outcomes such as being employed, income, person-organization fit, knowing where to look for a job, and career networking.

The positive relationship, in many instances, is curvilinear and highlights the downfall of working excessive hours. We also explore whether adolescent work for a stranger or family member leads to different outcomes, and find that working in a family business leads to enhanced later life utilization of career networks as well as better person-organization fit.

While we find that adolescent work intensity is linked to positive later life outcomes such as higher income, better fitting jobs, and better career networks, we also find maxima whereby additional hours worked have a diminishing effect on the outcomes. This suggests the need for societal norms and/or laws to avoid excessive adolescent work.

The findings in this chapter shed light on the role of early life work experiences in future professional outcomes. We show that certain types of adolescent employment can enhance future career prospects, counter to much of the established literature on the detrimental impact of youth labor.

Research has consistently shown that the children of business owners are more likely to become business owners themselves. However, what mechanism(s) underlies this intergenerational correlation is still not clear. In this research I assess the importance of several mechanisms proposed to drive the children of business owners to expect to become business owners.

Quantitative analyses of representative data from the 1988 to 1992 National Education Longitudinal Study are employed.

Results are inconsistent with arguments asserting that the children of business owners expect to become business owners because of: the transmission of human capital or financial capital; the expectation of inheriting a business; a heightened awareness of the viability of business ownership; or preferences for having lots of money, leisure time, being successful in work, or steady employment. Findings are consistent with the notion that the intergenerational correlation in business ownership is a result of shared preferences and/or traits, and this effect is particularly strong when accompanied by awareness of paternal business ownership.

Identifying which mechanism underlies the intergenerational transmission may inform how to increase rates of business ownership, particularly among underrepresented groups, which is a matter of increasing policy interest. However, our understanding is limited because: the intergenerational transfer is consistent with numerous mechanisms; and employment outcomes are often used to make inferences about preceding processes. This chapter focuses on expectations that precede outcomes to clarify which mechanism operates in one stage of the transmission process.

The “off-price” retailing concept is defined as the presentation of limited inventories of products in a “disorganised” retail environment which provides an extra level of “challenge” to the shopping experience. Research has identified “off-price” shoppers as those who approach this challenging experience in a purposeful, task-driven way. This current research contributes new knowledge by testing the impact of antecedents (i.e. involvement) on the “off-price” shopper experience and the moderating role of national culture across two distinct cultural groups.

Data were collected via a self-completed, anonymous, online survey provided to a sample of Australian (n = 355) and Chinese (n = 400) shoppers who were identified as regularly shopping for fashion in “off-price” retail stores.

The research found that the consumer's level of involvement positively impacted their “off-price” shopping experience in terms of effort/mastery and pride. However, in contrast to current knowledge of East-Asian and Western cultural variances, limited moderation effects were identified. All national cultural dimensions interacted with product involvement in influencing consumer pride. Whilst product involvement decreased with pride in higher individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and indulgence cultures, these reversed in cultures with a lower score in these four dimensions.

This new research extends knowledge of “off-price” shopper behaviour by testing the levels of involvement and experience across two distinctly different cultures – East Asian and Western – and challenges existing knowledge of cultural variances. Further, the work extends the use of achievement goal theory as an approach to delineate these consumers from other cohorts.