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This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

The victim’s rights movement and restorative justice (RJ) have gained momentum around the world. More laws and policies have focused on crime victims and their families. Western literature suggests that the victim’s family suffers physical, emotional, and financial tolls and that the power of the victim’s family in pursuing justice for their loved ones remains limited. This is particularly concerning within the political and legal context of the abolitionist movement, innocence project, and human rights groups’ campaigns against police torture. Grounded in the perspectives of RJ and Chinese legal culture, this study examines the victim’s family, represented by Ding and senior Yu, of the Nian Bin capital murder case. Drawing on published reports and using the thematic content analysis method, this study examines the following aspects of victim’s family in a death penalty case: 1) victim family’s physical, emotional, and financial tolls; 2) victims’ family and the criminal justice system; 3) victims’ family and the media; and 4) the relationship between the victims’ and the accused’s families. This study concludes with discussions of the competing goals of families impacted by a crime and RJ practices that would help mitigate the loss of the victim’s family and enhance their confidence in the criminal justice system.

The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological frame of yin-yang balancing can be taken as a unique system of thinking toward a meta-perspective. It is not only deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but also bears salient global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose and contribution of this chapter are twofold: (1) to explain the unique and salient features of yin-yang balancing (the “either/and” system to reframe paradox into duality as partially conflicting and partially complementary, both spatially and temporarily) as compared with the Western logic systems (the “either/or” and “both/or” or “both/and” systems); and (2) to explore the global implications of the “either/and” system for future paradox research, including the three unique themes of overlap between opposites with the “seed” of one opposite inside the other; threshold from the contingent balance between partial separation and partial integration in line with specific contexts through three operating mechanisms, and knot for the special role of third-party to shift paradox from a dyadic level to a triadic and even a multiplex level.

This chapter discussed the implementation of the digital twin (DT) idea into construction. Through the adoption of DTs into construction practices, construction professionals have been able to project an identical virtual concept of sections of the project execution right from the onset. In the introduction and discussing of its origin, the DT was further assessed about its applications in construction beneficial in enhancing project delivery. Other sections like barriers, drivers and benefits of the DT in construction summarised what this chapter represents in terms of discussing the new involvement of digital tools in construction execution, management and sustainability.

Currently, Mauritius is adopting landfilling as the main waste management method, which makes the waste sector the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG) in the country. This presents a challenge for the island to attain its commitments to reduce its GHG emissions to 30% by 2030 to cater for SDG 13 (Climate Action). Moreover, issues like eyesores caused by littering and overflowing of bins and low recycling rates due to low levels of waste segregation are adding to the obstacles for Mauritius to attain other SDGs like SDG 11 (Make Cities & Human Settlements Inclusive, Safe, Resilient & Sustainable) and SDG 12 (Guarantee Sustainable Consumption & Production Patterns). Therefore, together with an optimisation of waste collection, transportation and sorting processes, it is important to establish a solid waste characterisation to determine more sustainable waste management options for Mauritius to divert waste from the landfill. However, traditional waste characterisation is time consuming and costly. Thus, this chapter consists of looking at the feasibility of adopting machine learning to forecast the solid waste characteristics and to improve the solid waste management processes as per the concept of smart waste management for the island of Mauritius in line with reducing the current challenges being faced to attain SDGs 11, 12 and 13.

Due to the increasing size and complexity of construction projects, construction engineering and management involves the coordination of many complex and dynamic processes and relies on the analysis of uncertain, imprecise and incomplete information, including subjective and linguistically expressed information. Various modelling and computing techniques have been used by construction researchers and applied to practical construction problems in order to overcome these challenges, including fuzzy hybrid techniques. Fuzzy hybrid techniques combine the human-like reasoning capabilities of fuzzy logic with the capabilities of other techniques, such as optimization, machine learning, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and simulation, to capitalise on their strengths and overcome their limitations. Based on a review of construction literature, this chapter identifies the most common types of fuzzy hybrid techniques applied to construction problems and reviews selected papers in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique to illustrate their capabilities for addressing construction challenges. Finally, this chapter discusses areas for future development of fuzzy hybrid techniques that will increase their capabilities for solving construction-related problems. The contributions of this chapter are threefold: (1) the limitations of some standard techniques for solving construction problems are discussed, as are the ways that fuzzy methods have been hybridized with these techniques in order to address their limitations; (2) a review of existing applications of fuzzy hybrid techniques in construction is provided in order to illustrate the capabilities of these techniques for solving a variety of construction problems and (3) potential improvements in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique in construction are provided, as areas for future research.