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Presents a case study of the Dutch East India Company's tea trade with China, dealing with the phase of 1757-1781. This work focuses on the question why and how the tea trade was taken out of the hands of the High Government in Batavia and put under the supervision of the newly established China Committee in 1757.

In retrospectives on Brunei's first feature film Gema Dari Menara (1968), commentators have tended to focus on either its historical representation of Brunei's booming post-curfew years in the late 1960s as 'a time capsule of Brunei's lost pop history', or the film's propagandistic nature for Da'wah (religious propagation). In this paper, however, I will concentrate my observations on the aesthetic values of the film itself, including the narrative structure, plot design, camerawork, characterisation and character relationships, as well as the resulting artistic effects manifested by these production elements as a whole.
Putting all the propagandistic elements aside, I would like to argue that Gema Dari Menara, as a family melodrama, is carefully constructed and propelled by the above-mentioned filmmaking techniques. The drama not only tells the story of an intense familial conflict revolving around the theme of faith rooted in the Bruneian tradition, it also implies the necessity of an internal negotiation between the predominant Islamic ideology and the increasingly secularised Bruneian civil society at the time. While the implied negotiation may have been unintended or subconscious in the original making of the film, it is well-balanced and reflective of the political and social reality of Brunei as a British Protectorate in the late 1960s, foreshadowing the current coexistent status quo of the dominance and sacredness of MIB and the secular popular culture in Brunei.

Quelques villes et provinces chinoises ont mis en œuvre une intégration administrative verticale de la surveillance environnementale au niveau provincial en réponse à un grave problème de pollution de l'environnement. Dans la présente étude, nous utilisons un modèle de simulation adaptatif basé sur l'agent pour déterminer si la réforme pourrait effectivement encourager les entreprises industrielles polluantes à améliorer leur comportement environnemental. Les résultats de la simulation ont montré que pour encourager efficacement les améliorations souhaitées du comportement environnemental, la réforme doit encourager les décideurs politiques à améliorer les capacités financières des entreprises individuelles, à augmenter leurs subventions et à encourager les gestionnaires à améliorer leur conscience environnementale. Ces résultats pourraient être utilisés dans le cadre des efforts de réforme administrative verticale pour contribuer au succès de la réforme. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens La réforme verticale doit être suffisamment systématique dans toute sa structure gouvernementale car elle ne peut fonctionner de manière isolée. Elle fait partie du système sociétal complexe du pays sur le plan économique, social et environnemental. La restructuration administrative conjuguée à la réglementation du comportement des micro-agents pourrait augmenter les chances de succès de la réforme, et les politiques financières pourraient améliorer les comportements préventifs favorables à l'environnement. Une approche stratégique sophistiquée, telle que le fait d'encourager les comportements préventifs favorables à l'environnement par le biais d'opportunités commerciales, pourrait faciliter le changement de comportement.

A few cities and provinces in China have implemented vertical administrative integration of environmental monitoring to the provincial level as a response to severe environmental pollution. This study used an adaptive agent-based simulation model to explore whether the reform might effectively motivate polluting industrial firms to improve their environmental behaviour. Simulation results found that the reform might not effectively motivate the desired improvements in environmental behaviour unless policy-makers improve individual enterprises' financial capacities, enhance their subsidies, and encourage managers to improve their environmental awareness. These findings could be used in the vertical administrative reform efforts to help achieve the reform's success. Points for practitioners The vertical reform needs to be sufficiently systematic across its governmental structure because it cannot operate in isolation. It is a part of the country's complex economic, social, and environmental societal system. Combining administrative restructuring with regulation of micro-agents' behaviour might increase the reform's likelihood of success, and financial policies might improve preventive/enthusiastic environmental behaviour. A sophisticated policy approach, such as encouraging preventive/enthusiastic environmental behaviour through business opportunities, might ease behavioural change.

AbstractIndustrial firms' carbon management has been challenged by a multitude of pressures requiring measures and assessments. The present study proposes differential relationships between positive and negative pressures and firms' carbon management behaviour, as moderated by firm size. Employing a case study methodology with interviews in China, this research indicated that positive pressures, particularly from markets and communities, were positively linked with high scores in carbon management behaviour by fostering firm attentiveness and negatively linked with low scores. Negative pressures, such as government regulations, were positively linked with low scores in carbon management behaviour by fostering annoyance and firm burnout. Moreover, firm size moderated the relationship between positive pressures and carbon management behaviour; however, size did not moderate the relationship between negative pressures and carbon management behaviour. This finding suggests that policymakers might benefit from increasing positive pressures when they seek to strengthen firms' carbon management abilities and remove hindrances. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

This is the first data-driven pilot study that is focused on the micro-scaled but burgeoning Bruneian screen industry. The scope of the study includes employment modes, frequency of productions, payment codes of practice and exhibition platforms, based on the data collected by both online surveys and semi-structured, face-to-face interviews between January to June 2021. The aim of this paper is to investigate the possible creation of a temporarily closed system of interaction between the local screen industry and other Bruneian businesses. It is hypothesised that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent action taken by the Bruneian Government to restrict international travel and border crossings resulted in a new and rare interchange of production-based activity. The study targets a wide variety of parties, from industry professionals, e.g., production house managers, senior producers, freelancers, and the so-called gig-lancers, to governmental policymakers, i.e., representatives from Authority Info-communications Technology Industry (AITI) in Brunei.

The present study employed a quantitative survey to ascertain whether the external pressure of environmental risk management (ERM) on commercial banks was a contributing factor to their ERM behavior. Data was obtained using questionnaires from 204 branches of commercial banks located in the Yangtze River Delta of China. The relationship between external pressure and behavior was tested using a linear structural relations model through path analysis. The results revealed that external pressure of ERM was significantly and positively related to the behavior and that pressure from governmental regulations was the most important contributing factor in the passive feedback behavior and preventive behavior of commercial banks. The pressure from markets was the most important contributing factor in banks' active participation behavior; the pressure from community and NGOs was the most important contributing factor in their enthusiastic behavior.