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The design of the questionnaires was based on thinking, concepts or philosophies of the published ISO quality standards and Deming’s TQM theory. The amalgamation of these useful thoughts, concepts and philosophies should help in developing quality management and business management strategies that will lead to world‐class business performance.

Outlines the methodologies and bases used in the design of questionnaire for the investigation of quality management philosophies and strategies employed in Hong Kong organizations. The design of the questionnaire of the survey was based on people’s thinking and past experiences on quality management, concept and philosophy of some quality standards and Deming’s 14 points on Total Quality Management (TQM). The amalgamation of these useful thoughts, concepts and philosophies would help to develop their quality management and business management strategies that lead to business excellence performance. The survey itself would then further assess the state of development of quality management aspects and identify the future quality management strategies that suit the needs of industries of Hong Kong.

This paper describes the framework employed in strategy formulation by the Vocational Training Council’s Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education. The proposed framework integrates three widely used business management strategic tools together with the education criteria 1999 adopted from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) for strategy development in vocational education. The methodology of the proposed framework used is to conjoin the SWOT matrix with the balanced scorecard (BSC), identifying the four critical successful perspectives. Then the next step is to analyse the MBNQA education criteria 1999 for education performance excellence using quality function deployment (QFD) methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association of various family factors with children’s fruit and vegetable (FV) intake.

A cross-sectional analysis of data from 601 parent-child dyads with children aged three to six years old was conducted. Parents completed questionnaires on child’s FV intake, parenting styles, parental feeding practices, family functioning, television viewing at mealtimes and frequency of family meals. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between various family factors and the likelihood of meeting the child’s daily FV recommendation with adjustment for different demographic variables.

Multivariate model adjusting for sociodemographic data indicated that meeting vegetable recommendation was associated with lower frequency of dining with grandparents (Odds ratio (OR) 0.94, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.89–0.99, p=0.031) and positively associated with parents using more desirable parental feeding practices (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.09–1.21, p<0.001). Meeting fruit recommendation was associated with parents using more desirable parental feeding practices (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.09–1.17, p<0.001), higher frequency of dining with grandparents (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.00–1.10, p=0.041), lower frequency of dining with father (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.82–0.98, p=0.014) and higher score on authoritative parenting style (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.08, p=0.009).

This study highlights the potential protective roles of various family factors, in particular authoritative parenting style and parental feeding practices, such as role modeling, moderate restrictive practices for less healthy foods, avoidance of forced feeding, and not using junk food as reward in relation to meeting FV recommendation in children. The role of grandparents in influencing the young children’s eating behaviors within the Chinese family warrants further investigation.

Usage patterns of mobile phones in Israel position them as instruments of great importance and as everyday, multipurpose, and interpersonal devices. This study utilizes a critical perspective of the “uses and gratifications” approach to explore the usage of and gratification sought from smartphone usage of millennials. Sixty personal in-depth interviews were conducted during 2013 with millennials (undergraduate students) with the primary goal of exploring millennials’ perceptions of smartphone usages, as well as their personal experiences with smartphones and the role of smartphones in their lives. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze students’ reflections on the roles of smartphones in their lives. Participants have expressed a great bonding with their smartphone and relationships that can be described in term of "love and hate.” The thematic analysis highlighted the addictive elements of using their smartphone, that is, using it more frequently and under undesired circumstances than one would like to, and even becoming anxious about losing the device or even getting too far away from it. Other leading themes included the influence of external pressures to use smartphones, the varied usefulness that smartphones serve in participants’ lives, and a strong sense of "Fear of missing out" as an explanation for their extensive use of their smartphones. The findings of this chapter indicate that smartphones have become an indispensable medium among young adults, used due to practical, as well as to emotional reasons; inner, as well as external impulses.

This chapter introduces how the built environment and walking are connected. It looks at the interrelationships within the built environment, and how those are changing given planning and policy efforts to facilitate increased walking for both leisure activity and commuting. Using a broad review and case-based approach, the chapter examines this epistemological development of walking and the built environment over time, reviews the connections, policies and design strategies and emerging issues. The chapter shows many cases of cities which are creating a more walkable environment. It also reveals that emerging issues related to technology and autonomous vehicles, vision zero and car-free cities, and increased regional policy may play a continued role in shaping the built environment for walking. This dialogue provides both a core underpinning and a future vision for how the built environment can continue to influence and respond to pedestrians in shaping a more walkable world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of cultural differences and the types of relationship closeness involved in recipients’ emotional and behavioral reactions after receiving disliked gifts.

Collecting data from Thailand and the USA, two experiments were conducted in a 2 (self-construal: independent/interdependent) × 2 (relationship closeness: close/distant) between-subjects design. Study 1 explores the recipients’ feelings and reactions upon receipt of a disliked gift. Study 2 explores the disposition process for a disliked gift.

The results show that a recipient’s emotions, reaction and disposition process can be affected by cultural differences and relationship closeness: specifically that close and distant relationships moderate the relationship between self-construal and gift-receiving attitudes and behaviors.

Future research can investigate representative groups from other countries to broaden the generalizability of the findings.

This understanding can guide gift-givers when selecting gifts for close or distant recipients across cultures. Additionally, it can help retailers develop and introduce new marketing strategies by applying self-construal as a marketing segmentation tool for gift purchase and disposition.

This research is among the first studies to offer insights into how individuals in different cultures manage disliked gifts they receive from people in either close or distant relationships.

This study seeks to explore the presence and the relative strength of market efficiency in the onshore and offshore Renminbi (RMB) forward markets.

In the onshore and offshore foreign exchange markets, the RMB forward contracts are designed in similar ways. However, the underlying economic forces and regulatory frameworks are very different in these two markets. We first analyze the functioning of each market, by examining the covered interest rate parity (CIRP) conditions. Second, we explore the CIRP deviations in the two markets and quantify the role of market frictions and government interventions.

We find that the CIRP condition does not hold in either the onshore or the offshore RMB forward markets. We also find that the offshore market is more efficient than the onshore market in conveying private information about investors’ expectation.

Our results reveal that the onshore RMB forward market provides an imperfect platform for investors to manage their currency exposures. We suggest that by opening the offshore market to domestic participants and the onshore market to more foreigners, the forward rates may become more informative with a greater investor mix. These liberalization efforts are important steps in the right directions to improve market efficiency in the Chinese FOREX market.

With the call for educational policies focusing on more accountability and high stakes testing, educational legislations are putting the overall development of the preschool child at risk. Children spend much of their day preparing for standardized tests and skills such as self-regulation are not supported in early elementary grades. Research demonstrates that students who enter kindergarten without self-regulatory skills are at greater risk for difficulties such as peer rejection and low levels of academic achievement.

This chapter explores the association between self-regulation specifically, cognitive, impulse control, ethnicity, and academic achievement in preschool Dual Language Learners (DLL). Results revealed that cognitive control and academics vastly differs in Hispanic/Latino and African American preschool students. Implications for practice and policy are further discussed.