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Since the beginning of the 21st century, China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is growing steadily and Chinese multinationals (MNCs) are playing an increasingly important role in the global economy. Thus, the number of papers focusing on China’s OFDI and Chinese MNCs has been increasing during the last years. The aim of this chapter is to carry out a review of the empirical papers dealing with Chinese MNCs published between 2002 and 2012 in high-impact international business and management journals.

This chapter reviews 43 empirical papers focusing on Chinese MNCs that were published in nine major scholarly journals between 2002 and 2012.

We report individual and institutional contributions, the theories and methods used, the research topics, and the main findings. We also discuss implications for future research.

Some previous literature reviews have dealt with research on China’s OFDI and Chinese MNCs. Nevertheless, none of the earlier reviews dealt specifically with empirical papers; neither did they provide an analysis of both individual and institutional contributions.

In this chapter, the author explores the principles of responsible management education through the lens of Taoism. This chapter begins by introducing the concepts of knowledge-inquiry and wisdom-inquiry and highlights the differences between the two in the context of management education. The author emphasizes the importance of wisdom-inquiry in management education, arguing that it allows individuals to not only understand and analyze information but also to apply ethical considerations when making decisions. This chapter delves into how to synthesize knowledge and wisdom in education, highlighting the need for a balance between technical skills and ethical awareness in management education. This chapter concludes with an examination of the principles of managing talent by balancing competence and character. The author discusses how to hire for character and train for competence in human resources management and development. This approach involves focusing on developing individuals' character traits, such as integrity, compassion and empathy, in addition to their technical skills. This chapter demonstrates the value of incorporating Taoist principles into management education. When the importance of wisdom-inquiry, balancing competence and character, and developing ethical leaders is emphasized, management education can prepare individuals to navigate the complexities of the modern business landscape while promoting responsible business practices.

Emergency situations call for effective means of providing quality education. Higher education institutions are therefore required to use effective and efficient online approaches for teaching and learning which necessitate students, academic practitioners and institutions to engage and interact with each other successfully. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the importance of interaction and engagement in the use of blended learning online tools during emergency situations. The theoretical lens that informs the chapter is social constructivism which argues that learning is a social endeavour. The literature findings show that the effective engagement of students contributes to the overall quality of students’ produced experiences as well as pass rates. Furthermore, the importance of student–lecturer engagement and student–content engagement cannot be taken for granted. The right balance of synchronous and asynchronous online learning tools contributes to fruitful interaction and engagement. Online engagement seems to have many benefits as compared to conventional based engagement such as the ability of students to contribute to their teaching and learning. Despite these advantages, challenges associated with online learning such as balancing life commitments, confidence, students’ approach to learning, high investment costs in resources, motivation, competences of lecturers and students, interest of lecturers and students and efficacy of lecturers and students cannot be ignored. The authors therefore recommend that effective and efficient online learning requires the correct blend of online learning tools accompanied by the correct engagement strategies.

This paper proposes that if a political system is more like to facilitate a unified government, to establish a strong executive body and to respond to the needs of the majority, financial reforms are more likely to emerge from the policymaking process and produce positive results. On the contrary, political systems that discourage those governing features are less likely to produce reforms. This chapter compares financial reform processes in China, Taiwan and New Zealand. All of them performed low level of financial reforms in the early 1980s but resulted in different situations later. In the mid-2000s, New Zealand heralded the most efficient and stable financial system; while Taiwan lagged behind and China performed the worst. Evidence showed that China’s authoritarian system may be the most superior in forming a unified government with a strong executive, but the policy priority often responds more to the interests of a small group of power elites; therefore the result of financial reform can be limited. Taiwan’s presidential system can produce greater financial reform when the ruling party controls both executive and legislative bodies, but legislative obstructions may occur under a divided government. New Zealand's Westminster system produces the most effective and efficient financial reform due to its unified government and a strong executive branch with consistent and stable supports from the New Zealand Parliament.

Quality-Oriented Education (su zhi jiao yu) is a national education reform initiative that presents ongoing opportunities and challenges to schools, local bureaus of education, and the overall educational system in China today. This chapter seeks to gain insight into if and how Quality-Oriented Education, 10 years into its enactment, has taken root in practice. We posit that a reform agenda is best manifested through well-aligned and operable standards for school effectiveness. We introduce the policy-driven definition for school effectiveness and an evaluation framework depicting the intended focus of Quality-Oriented Education. Using an iterative and inductive process for content analysis, we compare the policy-driven framework with the coding results of a 2009 national inventory of actual school evaluation schemes in 91 Chinese school districts. Our review points out that the new mission of Quality-Oriented Education advocates educational equity, curriculum reform, and systemic support for school-based management. However, at the operational level, there are great variations in terms of content domain, focus, and function among school evaluation schemes with notable regional differences. Furthermore, schools are still caught between the existing system that measures school performance by achievement and the intended accountability scheme that calls for enhanced student ability. This chapter adds to the empirical foundation for the development of a new framework that not only captures the spirit of the national educational reform but also is informed of the developmental needs of schools in drastically different geo-economical and social conditions.

Purpose and methodology – Focusing on the policy contexts of gender education in Taiwan, this chapter uses data from interviews with elite policymakers and policy documents to examine how feminist activists sought to legitimatize gender equity in education in the wake of the comprehensive social and educational reforms of the 1990s and early years of this decade.

Findings – The embedding of gender in education did not follow a smooth path in terms of policy formulation. Feminist activists drove the process of reform by retaining control over the naming of the legislation, and its wording, thus preserving the language and imperatives of gender equity.

Social implications – In this chapter, I examine the formation of the Gender Equity Education Law, detailing the struggles, contentions, and negotiations that underlay the eventual approval of gender reform in education.

Originality/value of chapter – The chapter contributes significantly by identifying the necessity to recognize the nature of the state and its relations with society in order to research gender in education in Taiwan.