Search results

Disaster education is considered as a newly emerging area of research and practice, which promotes community-based educational approaches for building resilience. Given the atypical nature of these disturbances, people and communities need to develop the knowledge required to anticipate and understand what they could have to contend with and proactively develop strategies that can minimize their risk and afford ways to cope with and adapt to adverse situations in an effective manner. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that informal education resulting from daily activities related to work, family life, or leisure can be harnessed to develop disaster resilience within community settings.

This conceptual paper provides the discussion and synthesis of literature covering community resilience, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and informal education. In doing so, this study proposes a conceptual framework and implementation strategies for harnessing informal education in building community resilience.

To harness informal disaster education for community resilience, the authors suggest a conceptual framework and four implementation strategies with the corresponding implications: cultivate social environment for conversations, discussions, reflections and learning; design social activities for promoting and encouraging informal learning; appropriate interventions by informal educators in social activities; and transparent resources and channels for information and social supports. A compilation of a number of community-based DRR practices involving civil society organizations has been incorporated in the proposed framework for exemplifying informal disaster education for community resilience.

Promoting informal education in community settings is aimed at building community resilience in a collective way, which is especially important in disaster-prone areas. Informal education for community resilience not only educates individuals how to deal with disasters, but also connects individuals together to be more resilient in their ability to cope or bounce back from adverse events in their life.

Fabric defects detection is vital in the automation of textile industry. The purpose of this paper is to develop and implement a new fabric defects detection method based on adaptive wavelet.

Fabric defects can be regarded as the abrupt features of textile images with uniform background textures. Wavelets have compact support and can represent these textures. When there is an abrupt feature existed, the response is totally different with the response of the background textures, so wavelets can detect these abrupt features. This method designs the appropriate wavelet bases for different fabric images adaptively. The defects can be detected accurately.

The proposed method achieves accurate detection of fabric defects. The experimental results suggest that the approach is effective.

This paper develops an appropriate method to design wavelet filter coefficients for detecting fabric defects, which is called adaptive wavelet. And it is helpful to realize the automation of textile industry.

Business is about building relationships and hence relationship building is becoming increasingly important for cross‐cultural management. Current research findings in this area have mainly focused on relationship marketing or on cultural dimensions of business relationships. This preliminary study attempts to break the boundary and aims to explore relationship building from a culture‐specific perspective while in corporating a social constructivist dimension. Specifically, it compares relationship building across four cultures including European, New Zealand, Chinese, Indian and South African cultures. The research method is interpretive, based on an analysis of interview results with business executives from the four target cultures.

This paper examines the challenges facing China's employment relations after its WTO accession and consequently, the implications for further reform.

Theoretical questions are considered in relation to the debate on globalization vs the nation‐state over political, economic and social issues. By examining the challenges from both internal and external sources, the paper investigates the impact on the employment relations system at both macro‐ and micro‐levels.

The major finding of this paper is that the current system of employment relations system in China is in the process of transformation towards a “hybrid” model combining authoritarianism and neo‐corporatism.

This paper provides the most recent analysis on the impact of WTO accession on the changing pattern of employment relations in China. It helps people who are interested in transitional economy in general and in China in particular to have a better understanding about the transformation of employment relations system under the influence of different forces.

The purpose of this article is to emphasise the development, importance and pressures on the under‐researched area of Chinese small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and human resource management (HRM) and provide a review and research agenda, especially relating to the debate on convergence vis‐à‐vis divergence.

Recent research papers are discussed and possible convergence and the pressures on HRM and its practice in Chinese SMEs are examined. Key elements in Chinese HRM are highlighted. Four main dimensions of HRM are compared in terms of western and Chinese characteristics and their cultural impacts and problems. A conceptual framework to locate influences on Chinese HRM is outlined as well as a set of propositions for future research and examination of key HRM areas.

The continuing influences on HRM suggest that a distinctly Chinese HRM approach combining western practice with Chinese characteristics may be one way for SMEs to develop.

It is central to a better understanding of Chinese SMEs and helps fill some of the gap in the analysis of HRM in Chinese SMEs. It also offers insights which managers, policy makers and Chinese government can use to construct and reform the supporting system for SMEs.