From a pilot research study in a family service agency in Singapore, the authors identified four key factors in understanding positive change versus no change in multilevel systemic work with low-income, stressed families: family life-cycle stage, type of problems or crisis, worker continuity and skills, and resources in the local community. The findings raise important questions for both practical and future knowledge building, suggesting that systemic work with low-income, stressed families can be effective.
Corruption is a major threat faced by China and anyone who wants to do business in the country. In recent years, the Chinese government's crackdowns in corruption has led to some success. In the Berlin-based non-profit Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index 2017, China ranked 77th with a score of 41 out of 100, a slight improvement from the score of 36 in 2014. The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople with a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
Shareholders of low-profile Chinese property developer Tianjin Realty Development recently made news by voting to keep party politics out of the Shanghai-listed company's organisational structure. Such action has never been heard of before at any State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) in the history of China's economic modernisation.
The expansion plan of Hong Kong Disneyland has been a highly controversial topic in Hong Kong. Local lawmakers have criticised the government of taking a weak stance in the "unequal deal" with the US firm.
Numerous studies have been done and various explanations have been advanced in the literature on overseas Chinese business success and entrepreneurial capabilities. However, most of the studies are broad-based and focused on the macro-level; there is relatively little account in the literature on the more down-to-earth, micro-level entrepreneurial characteristics and management styles of the small Chinese firms that have contributed to their success. The purpose of this paper is to record our observations of the more down-to-earth aspects of the entrepreneurial characteristics and management styles of small Chinese businesses in Malaysia and Singapore that have contributed to their success. We also attempt to relate these peculiar characteristics and styles to Sun Zi's in "Art of War".
In recent years, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a prominent endeavour in numerous enterprises and organizations. The purpose of this article is to investigate the theoretical aspects of CSR's commercial significance, as well as to identify and analyse CSR practices during COVID-19 in Bangladesh and Singapore. Government funding alone may not be sufficient to offset any adversity's economic and other consequences. Hence, CSR has evolved. This article examines what role CSR played during the difficult COVID-19 pandemic in two countries. The private sector made significant contributions through CSR to healthcare infrastructure and mitigating the economic burden of COVID-19 in both countries.
Data obtained from unionized employees in Singapore (N = 205) were used to investigate Strauss' (1977) suggestion that union participation studies be fitted into the general theories of role and commitment. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the contribution of role commitment variables (family and union) net of demographic, job or work and union-related variables to the explained variance in a unidimensional model of union participation. The model accounted for 43% (R2) of the explained variance in participation with the role commitment antecedent set contributing a modest 5% (ΔR2). The significant positive individual variables were union satisfaction, union commitment, union tenure, and gender while union socialization and marital status positively, and family commitment negatively approached significance. Extrinsic satisfaction was significantly negatively related to participation. Limitations of the study, directions for future research and the implications of the findings are discussed.
One of the most affluent and developed nations in its region, the city-state of Singapore relies largely on tapping global resources for economic growth, to ameliorate its tiny land area and accompanying lack of natural resources. Its current prominence is to a great degree owing to an early recognition of the need for such, and a well-documented stratagem of expanding its foreign direct investments (FDIs) as a means to stimulate economic development (Huff, 1995; Murray and Pereira, 1995) and strengthen the city-state's 'external economy' - one which saw the island progress through a number of distinct phases of overseas investment initiatives, each with its own successes and inevitably, failures; the city-state itself taking away, in each case, lessons to be learnt therefrom. Initial ventures in North America and Western Europe, attempting to expedite access to new technology and markets, proved largely unprofitable, suggesting efforts were best refocused elsewhere (Sitathan, 2002). A shift occurred towards regionalization, with a refocus on opportunities within Asia, particularly in China, Indonesia and Vietnam (Tan, 1995; Okposin, 1999); this was embarked upon largely under the aegis of government support, through the vehicle of state-sponsored industrial townships, negotiated upon at a state level and managed heavily through government-linked companies (GLCs). This was to ultimately achieve much more positive, although yet somewhat mixed, results, as described in our older research, and was to also provide a number of invaluable and cautionary lessons as to the exportability of Singapore-styled business practices and systems to foreign cultures (Yeoh et al, 2006; How & Yeoh, 2007) – which, in short, was that wholesale exportability was less than tenable in the long-term.
This special section deals with China's longstanding fascination with Singapore's development experience that has preoccupied post-Maoist leaders from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping despite the obvious differences between the tiny Southeast Asian city-state and the most populous country on earth. In particular, there is great Chinese interest in Singapore's success in combining effective governance and efficient state capitalism with stable one-party dominant rule. As a consequence, Chinese observers paid much less attention to electoral democracies that were well-governed states with mature economies. (China Q/GIGA)
In 2012, Singapore amended its Misuse of Drugs to give courts hearing capital drug trafficking cases the discretion to replace the default death penalty with life imprisonment and caning, provided that the accused person can show that he was merely a drug courier and the prosecution certifies that he had substantively assisted the authorities in disrupting drug trafficking activities. The Singapore High Court and Court of Appeal have since made important pronouncements on the 2012 amendments, but several challenges remain: first, whether the privilege against self-incrimination has been further eroded; secondly, whether an accused person can invoke the statutory relief of being a courier only at sentencing; thirdly, whether it is appropriate to leave the certification decision solely to the prosecution; and finally, whether guidelines as to when the death sentence is appropriate should have been prescribed. These challenges ought to be given serious legislative or judicial consideration as the criminal justice system in Singapore continues to evolve in response to changing public perceptions of due process and crime control. The first three challenges, in particular, may have important ramifications for potentially innocent accused persons as it is submitted that the law as it stands may incentivise some of them to plead guilty from the outset to maximise their chances of avoiding the death penalty. As there are still a number of jurisdictions that retain the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking offences, this article may also be of comparative interest, especially since there appears to be a dearth of literature on the discretionary death penalty for drug offences.
This book focuses on current subcontracting practices in the construction industry and their effects on Singapore's construction productivity. It offers readers a better understanding of how the fragmentation of large and small firms in Singapore impacts construction productivity when operating under the commonly adopted multilayer subcontracting system (MLSS), which extends globally to the construction industries in other countries that have adopted the MLSS. The book also assesses the effectiveness of subcontracting practices in helping local contractors improve their construction productivity (and thereby improve the industry's overall productivity). In closing, it provides recommendations on how the problems associated with the MLSS can best be addressed, and how its benefits can be capitalized on through organizational learning.
