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With the increasing emphasis on people‐centred management and the upsurge of efforts placed on Training and Development in Singapore, it is expected that more and more people will enter the field of Human Resource Development. Some of these people have been exposed to direct experience as trainers, platform speakers, educators or discussion leaders. However, there are still quite a few trainers who may not be aware of some of the more effective participative techniques for group interaction during their training presentations.

This paper aims to focus on the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in preparation for and management of human and/or nature induced disasters.

Drawing from the phenomenal growth of ICTs, initiatives aimed at disaster management, stakeholder theory, prior research and the successful development and implementation of 9-1-1 (emergency telephone service of the USA), this paper explores ICTs in the context of human and/or nature induced disasters.

This paper discusses a new ICT for mitigating disaster management, scans, using stakeholder theory, relevant initiatives and prior research to identify the stakeholders relevant for successful preparation for and management of disasters, and draws from the 9-1-1 example to discuss how ICTs can be successfully developed and adopted.

There are opportunities for researchers to develop ICTs that can make countries, developing and developed, more efficient and effective in their preparation for and management of nature and human induced disasters. In addition, researchers can investigate the role of stakeholders in facilitating the adoption of new ICTs developed for disaster management. Researchers could also help public policy in designing the most efficient and effective programs for the adoption of new ICTs.

As an example of new ICTs that can potentially mitigate the effect of disasters, this paper discusses the E711 text-message mobile phone service (named “I am OK”) and provides a description of how this protocol operates and can be implemented. There are tremendous opportunities to develop new ICTs in the context of disaster management.

This paper argues that ICTs such as E711 can have a major impact on all countries in general and poor and developing nations in particular. Specifically, in the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) markets, developing ICTs for BOP market in the context of managing human and nature induced disasters and ensuring the diffusion of such ICT innovations is both critical and challenging.

This paper discusses the role and importance of ICTs in disaster management, identifies relevant stakeholders, discusses how ICTs can be diffused and implemented and calls on and hopes to provide an impetus to research on ICTs that can aid in the preparation for and the management of disasters.

The paper aims to explore the road to independence of the less-fortunate women in early Hong Kong society and their means in passing of wealth after death. In the 1970s, about 400 Chinese wills from the 1840s to the 1940s were dug up on a construction site in Hong Kong. One-fourth of these were from women who had held a substantial amount of property. How they obtained this property intrigued us because, at that time, women were seen as subordinate to men and excluded from the labor market. Why they had wills led to further questions about Hong Kong society of that time and the role of women in it.

The analysis of this paper is based on archival data gathered from the Hong Kong Public Records Office. These data include 98 women’s wills filed from the 1840s to the 1940s and a 500-page government investigation report on the prostitution industry released in 1879. The former recorded valuable information of brief testators’ family and personal life history, amount of assets, and profolio of investment, etc. The latter included testimonials of brothel keepers and prostitutes and their life stories and the background of legalizing prostitution in early Hong Kong. Apart from basic quantitative analysis on women’s marital status, number of properties, nature of wills and number of brothels, qualitative analysis is directed to review the testator’s life of self-reliance, wealth accumulation and reasons of using wills for arranging wealth transmission after death.

In this paper, the authors found that because the colonial government declared prostitution legal, and only women could obtain employment by becoming prostitutes or brothel keepers, they earned their own livelihood, saved money and finally became independent. However, because these professions were not seen as “decent”, and these women were excluded from the formal marriage system, intestacy could cause problems for them. Through their socio-business connections, they became familiar with the Western concept of testate inheritance. So, they tended to use wills – a legal document by which a person assigns someone to distribute his or her property according to his or her wishes after his or her death – to assign their property.

Because only archival data are chosen for analysis, the research results may lack generalizability. Follow-up researches to examine whether the studied women acquired their wealth through their own work or simply as gifts from others are required.

This paper explores the understudied women’s life and method of estate passing after death in the early Hong Kong society. It fills the academic gap of women’s contribution to Hong Kong’s success and enriches our understanding on the important factors that could attribute women’s real independence.

The purpose of this study is to propose two additions to the existing IS success model to influence usefulness and satisfaction, and ultimately customer loyalty. This study posits that process quality and collaboration quality will significantly influence perceptions on satisfaction, since both considerations are expected to improve interactions between the organization and its customers.

The developed research model was tested in the context of B2B e‐commerce users, employing structural equation modelling‐partial least square to analyze and test the research hypotheses.

Results show that adding process and collaboration quality to the model affects the way system, information, and service quality influences usefulness and satisfaction, suggesting a shift in perspectives and priorities when it comes to B2B e‐commerce transactions. Furthermore, results show that process and collaboration quality have significant effects on usefulness and satisfaction, reinforcing the objective of using B2B e‐commerce systems across supply chain members.

This highlights the importance of improving business processes and enhancing collaboration activities, implying that managers should focus their efforts into enhancing customer service on top of system functionalities and features via B2B to better work with their supply chain partners. However, this study is limited in the context of a Taiwanese supply chain, suggesting that further research consider its applicability in different contexts, culturally and geographically, especially given the fact that B2B e‐commerce enables cross‐border business operations.

This study also extends the IS success model, especially in the context of B2B e‐commerce, by emphasizing behavioural considerations on top of the functional issues present in any information systems.

This paper provides an overview of transition strategy, focusing specifically on the Chinese business world, where the common practice is for founders to pass their companies on to their children, the younger generation. This paper describes how Chinese businesses are invariably adopting the western‐style management practice of instituting the various offices of chairman, chief executive officer, president, etc. primarily because the children of those founding fathers have been mostly sent to the USA, the UK and Canada to receive higher education. This paper concludes that these second‐generation operating managers have essentially transformed their business environments with great success, modernizing the Asian business community as a whole and competing effectively with the western world.

Details of Some Components Used for Subsidiary Services in Aircraft, Missiles and Space Vehicles. A new swivel pipe coupling has been developed by Dowty Rotol Ltd., Staverton, Glos. It can accommodate a geometry too acute for flexible hydraulic couplings, takes up less space, and offers a reduced fire hazard. Initial applications will be in the aircraft field, particularly undercarriages, but other applications, perhaps in the industrial field, are envisaged.

While envy has been widely explored in psychology literature, theoretical understanding of the effects of envy on consumers’ emotional responses to brands is promising but under explored. Therefore, this study aims to apply cases of envy and psychological distance to consumers to examine whether the style of brand storytelling can moderate brand preference.

Three experimental studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. Experiment 1 investigated the effect of envy on consumer evaluations of an advocated brand, through viewing a series of advertisements that varied in brand storytelling styles. A total of 104 working students were randomly assigned to a 2 (brand storytelling: underdog vs top dog) single factorial design. Experiment 2 investigates the effect of envy on consumer evaluations of the advocated brand through viewing advertisements that varied in psychological distance. A total of 108 working students were randomly assigned to a 2 (psychological distance: proximal vs distant) single factorial design. Experiment 3 investigated the effect of envy on evaluations of the brand through viewing advertisements that varied in brand storytelling style and psychological distance. A total of 208 working students were randomly assigned to a 2 (underdog vs top dog) × 2 (proximal vs distant psychological distance) between-subject factorial design.

Results demonstrate that for consumers experiencing benign and malicious envy, advertisements characterized by brand storytelling (underdog vs top dog) and psychological distance (proximal vs distant) will elicit differential brand preferences.

This research takes up the call to address the limited attention given to envy in the context of brand advertising. Specifically, this research aims to explore how consumer envy influences brand preference and the role of moderating effects such as brand storytelling and psychological distance in this context.

Looks at consumer research in Greater China including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Maps out the contributions within this area and guides future research. Examines the state of the art over the 1979‐97 period, with particular emphasis on the topics that have been researched, the extent of the theory development in the field and the methodologies used in conducting research. Uses content analysis to review 75 relevant articles. Suggests that, while a considerable breadth of topics have been researched, there remains much to be done, there is further room for theoretical development in Chinese consumer behaviour studies; and the methodologies used need improvement and further refinement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a commercial partnership in a project‐type supply chain. The research focuses on the performance of suppliers who develop a partnering mechanism for procurement of complex manufacturing projects. In total, four supply chain metrics are evaluated: project scope change, ratio of actual‐to‐estimated project costs, gross profit margin, and delay in deliverable shipments. Hypotheses are formulated to contrast partnerships and arms‐length relationships for industrial procurement. Statistical results support the conclusion that supplier performances improve under partnership.

Four supply chain metrics were generated through review of literature and in‐depth field study. The authors utilized the supply chain management, project management, and principal‐agent theory literature to develop hypotheses to examine effects of instituting a partnership agreement. A case study approach was employed to collect financial and operational data from 167 projects among a manufacturing supplier and a group of customers that purchase industrial analyzer systems. Statistical techniques were employed for hypothesis testing.

The findings from the authors' empirical work support the prediction in partnership literature that suppliers' operational and financial performances improve after they and manufacturing customers jointly implement partnerships. A supplementary finding also suggests that a manufacturer should develop partnering mechanisms with suppliers to achieve higher performance for both the individual firms and the entire supply chain.

This study, like other “before and after” analyses, encounters limitations on causality. Advanced techniques, e.g. cause‐effect investigation with richer data, are hence necessary to validate the causal relationships between performance metrics and their drivers. This study focuses only on the supplier's side of the supply chain and its partnership in a specific industrial setting. Future research may consider studying the joint performance by supplier‐customer dyads in commercial partnerships with variations of partnering agreements.

Partnerships motivate trading partners to engage in higher level of coordination. Transactional hazards can be reduced and performance may improve under the partnering mechanism. The manufacturer may design the procurement partnership as a collaborative mechanism, thus helping a partnering supplier and itself to obtain increased mutual gains.

The paper provides detailed information of a unique case study of the partnership in a project‐type supply chain, which is relatively new in the literature. Research streams on supply chain management, project management, and principal‐agent theory are integrated to evaluate supplier performance. Empirical results confirm partnership impacts on suppliers' business performance.