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The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

Although Korean sociology of sport is relatively unknown to the international community of scholars, it is a mature field in Korea. Sociology of sport was first introduced in Korea in the mid-1960s when the field first evolved in North America and Europe. However, the development of the field shows different aspects from its Western counterpart due to unique cultural and environmental factors both in academia and in society. There are three major research trends that form Korean sociology of sport. First, there is the research focus on the benefit of sport and physical activity by examining empirical data using quantitative methodologies. The second group of researchers pays attention to individual experience in diverse sport fields and utilize qualitative methodologies to investigate empirical or secondary data. The third and most recent trend is a critical approach that theoretically analyzes ideologies, power relations, and identity politics in sport and society. When looking at the future, there are problems and limitations within the field in Korea. These include lack of continuity in terms of conference sub-themes, over-production of doctoral degree graduates, conservatism rooted in the field, and a danger of regarding sport policy research as an exit for sport sociologists. However, there are also possibilities and reasons for optimism. The biggest possibility for Korean sociology of sport is globalization of the field. Another significant possibility is the need for sport sociologists in planning, developing, and evaluating sport policy. Finally, diversification of the field gives ample opportunities for future research.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Purpose – The purpose of the research was to examine the process of new teacher evaluation policy development in South Korea, in order to gain insight into how a controversial policy could be established in education. Research questions were about the process of the policy development, political actors involved and their influences, and the meaning of teacher evaluation in the newly established teacher evaluation policy.Methodology – The study uses a qualitative and descriptive-analytical process from a hermeneutics perspective that views policy as text to be interpreted. This perspective allows policy to be connected to a larger social context through interpretations of text. The main data sources included policy documents, statements by various organizations, research reports, and public media artifacts produced between 2000 and 2012. For data analysis, constant comparison and content analysis methods were used.Findings – The findings show that the process of developing a teacher evaluation system demonstrated an unsuccessful attempt to apply the Habermasian notion of discursive democracy. Relevant stakeholders were invited to deliberate on the reform, but official meetings ended prematurely without consensus. In the end, the government proceeded without full support of any stakeholders. During the deliberation process, teacher organizations and parent groups demonstrated conflicting perspectives on teacher work and the new evaluation system only partially accommodated both perspectives. The effectiveness of the new evaluation system remains to be researched.Value – The policy development process and the evaluation system shown in this study should inform similar efforts in other contexts.