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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Business
Nonprofits As Socially Responsible Actors: Neoliberalism, Institutional Structures, And Empowerment In The United Nations Global Compact, Alwyn Lim
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations have become prominent participants in a global organizational responsibility movement. This trend of nonprofit responsibility is puzzling because nonprofits are presumably already dedicated to the pursuit of collective well-being objectives. This article examines the nonprofit responsibility movement from a cultural perspective, whereby broader cultural changes at the level of international organizations have constructed nonprofit entities as empowered and socially responsible actors. Using the case of the United Nations Global Compact, a global framework for corporate social responsibility, the author shows how (1) the construction of cultural meanings of autonomy and decentralization in the neoliberal context, (2) …
Farmers In Singapore? Collective Action Under Adverse Circumstances, Yu Fong Ho, John A. Donaldson
Farmers In Singapore? Collective Action Under Adverse Circumstances, Yu Fong Ho, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
How can individuals with contrasting interests in a declining industry, at odds with the country’s identity, and facing an illiberal and sceptical government, band together to promote collective goals? This article addresses this question by examining Singapore’s Kranji Countryside Association, one of Singapore’s few civil society organisations to focus on community organising. To Association members, the material and time costs of organising were high, the odds of success were low and the material rewards of success were modest. The article evaluates two views that purport to explain collective action: the rational choice approach that focuses on selective incentives and the …
Becoming Citizens: Policy Feedback And The Transformation Of The Thai Rice Farmer, Jacob Ricks, Thanapan Laiprakobsub
Becoming Citizens: Policy Feedback And The Transformation Of The Thai Rice Farmer, Jacob Ricks, Thanapan Laiprakobsub
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Over the past twenty years, Thailand’s rice farmers have become one of the country’s most important and active political constituencies, a sharp contrast from the previous decades wherein they were treated with neglect or even derision by the Thai political elite. These “political peasants” now actively advocate for and successfully receive extensive subsidies from both authoritarian and democratic governments. What has driven this change? In this essay, we draw on theories of the policy feedback loop wherein policies yield both material and cognitive benefits, which change the political behavior of populations. We argue that the Thaksin Shinawatra government’s (2001-2006) paddy …
Helping The Singapore Arts Sector Survive The Covid-19 Crisis, Su Fern Hoe
Helping The Singapore Arts Sector Survive The Covid-19 Crisis, Su Fern Hoe
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
From online art classes to livestreaming performances and collective singing to cheer frontline healthcare workers, people across the globe are turning to the arts for much-needed connection and comfort amid the Covid-19 crisis.
Obstacles To Accessing Pro-Poor Microcredit Programs In China: Evidence From Penggan Village, Guizhou, Deborah Shu Yi Tan, Track Tze Tuan Tan, Shao Tong Ling, John A. Donaldson
Obstacles To Accessing Pro-Poor Microcredit Programs In China: Evidence From Penggan Village, Guizhou, Deborah Shu Yi Tan, Track Tze Tuan Tan, Shao Tong Ling, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Why do poor farmers not take up microcredit loans, even when the terms are designed to be pro-poor? Fieldwork in a village in China’s Guizhou province revealed a puzzle: although the county government had designed a loan program that was intended to be unusually pro-poor, only three of the 349 eligible households had successfully applied. This article analyzes three potential hypotheses: farmer failure (risk aversion or financial illiteracy), market failure (lack of viable or stable market opportunities), and institutional failure (structural or institutional barriers precluding taking up loans). Based on evidence from intensive interviews, we reject the first hypothesis, and …
Making Ethnic Tourism Good For The Poor, Jean Junying Lor, Shelly Kwa, John A. Donaldson
Making Ethnic Tourism Good For The Poor, Jean Junying Lor, Shelly Kwa, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
How can ethnic tourism alleviate rural poverty? Due to the difficulty of simultaneously expanding tourism while promoting pro-poor tourism, most villages traverse one of two developmental pathways: 1) ensuring an inclusive structure before expanding, or 2) expanding before building an inclusive structure. This study compares four comparable cases in Southwestern China to understand the politics behind the decision to choose different pathways, and the impact each pathways has on local residents. While the first pathway requires a careful balance to maintain a pro-poor structure as tourism volume expands, the second pathway presents apparently insurmountable barriers to poverty reduction due to …
Nurturing The Cultural Desert: The Role Of Museums In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe, Terence Chong
Nurturing The Cultural Desert: The Role Of Museums In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe, Terence Chong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The absence of official platforms and institutions such as museums and visual arts spaces; while the artistic amateur scene was flourishing, there were no museums or national galleries where collections of the best local and regional artworks could be found, appreciated and studied by artists and citizens. This cultural desert was the result of the government’s attention to bread and butter issues. How, then, did Singapore transform from “cultural desert” of yesteryear to a city with 51 museums and 118 art galleries in 2013, as well as an arts scene that saw more than 3.2 million visitors to the national …
The Arts And Culture Strategic Review Report: Harnessing The Arts For Community-Building, Su Fern Hoe
The Arts And Culture Strategic Review Report: Harnessing The Arts For Community-Building, Su Fern Hoe
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The Arts and Culture Strategic Review (ACSR) was initiated in 2010 to chart the next phase of cultural development in Singapore. The final report, which was released in 2012, appears to propose a paradigm shift in focus for arts and cultural policy making in Singapore: from the desire to manage the arts and cultural sectors into profitable creative industries to the utilisation of the arts and culture as expedient tools for social cohesion and community building in Singapore. This shift has resulted in government programmes placing (renewed) importance and emphasis on “community arts” as a cultural activity. This chapter critically …
Global Ambitions: Positioning Singapore As A Contemporary Arts Hub, Su Fern Hoe
Global Ambitions: Positioning Singapore As A Contemporary Arts Hub, Su Fern Hoe
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This chapter has two objectives. The first is to critically interrogate the state’s efforts in utilising the visual arts as a means to position Singapore as an international arts hub and marketplace. As Kwok Kian Woon and Low Kee-Hong have noted, “Singapore’s cultural policy has everything to do with staying on top as a focal node in the late-capitalist world system of the new millennium” (Kwok and Low, 2002, p. 154). This chapter offers an overview of the programmes and initiatives introduced by the state from the 1990s to the present in order to encourage the entry of international art …
Preparing For Socio-Technical Transitions: Opportunities And Challenges For Policy Design, Sreeja Nair, Araz Taeihagh
Preparing For Socio-Technical Transitions: Opportunities And Challenges For Policy Design, Sreeja Nair, Araz Taeihagh
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Effective policy mixes are expected to accommodate uncertainties in the future policy context by being flexible and adapt over time in expectation of a range of anticipated and unanticipated conditions. In response to shifts in the future policy context, while policy changes can manifest as increments to status quo over time, policymakers may also need to face the possibility of making major policy shifts to enable the transition into more appropriate policy regimes. In the context of socio-technical transitions, the switch to new policy alternatives can be facilitated by incorporating new policy actions into the suite of current policy strategies …
Betting On The Big: State-Brokered Land Transfers, Large-Scale Agricultural Producers, And Rural Policy Implementation, Weigang Gong, Qian Forrest Zhang
Betting On The Big: State-Brokered Land Transfers, Large-Scale Agricultural Producers, And Rural Policy Implementation, Weigang Gong, Qian Forrest Zhang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
As rural governments have become hollowed out and detached from rural society, can they still effectively implement policies that lack popular support? This article examines a county in Hunan Province, where local governments had strong incentives to implement a national policy of increasing double cropping in rice farming. Small farmers rejected double cropping as unprofitable. Local governments’ limited capacity prevented them from either reshaping small farmers’ economic calculus or coercing compliance. They strategically selected a policy tool acceptable to most small farmers (paid land transfers) and gave new private large-scale producers incentives to double crop by providing subsidies and access …
Refining The Prize: Chinese Oil Refineries And Its Energy Security, Inwook Kim
Refining The Prize: Chinese Oil Refineries And Its Energy Security, Inwook Kim
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Since China became a net oil importer in 1993, oil refineries have played integral roles in China's quest for oil security. And yet, the capacity, security, and configurations of refineries were rarely featured in the discussions about China's oil policy. To fill this gap, this paper explains the basics of refinery economics and technology, and details the development in China's refining industry since the early 1990s. By taking refineries into consideration, it then revisits and reassesses the existing literature regarding the motives and drivers behind China's foreign oil policy, its effectiveness, and the political interactions between China and crude oil …
Achieving Regulatory Excellence In The Agri-Food Biotechnology Sector: Building Policy Capacity, Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee
Achieving Regulatory Excellence In The Agri-Food Biotechnology Sector: Building Policy Capacity, Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What capacities are needed on the part of policymakers in areas such as the agri-food biotechnology sector in order to attain excellence at the individual, organisational and systemic levels of regulatory operation? To address this question, this paper draws upon work recently carried out on regulatory excellence by the Penn Programme on Regulation and couples it with recent studies on how to build policy capacity. Derived from a multi-jurisdiction, multi-sector review of regulation, the Penn programme identified three core areas or `pillars' of regulatory excellence - namely, stellar competence, empathic engagement and utmost integrity -which reflect the kinds of individual …
The New Capitalism: Asia And The Future Of Business, Government, And Society, Ann Florini, Bindu Sharma
The New Capitalism: Asia And The Future Of Business, Government, And Society, Ann Florini, Bindu Sharma
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
To have a conversation, the appropriate language is needed. The language is just starting to emerge in both Asia and the West for one of the most important conversations the world is now having—the discussion about the future of business and capitalism. Thailand’s King Bhumibol refers to the sufficiency economy. Harvard’s Michael Porter speaks of shared value. Ellen MacArthur’s eponymous foundation supports the transition to the circular economy. John Elkington proposes breakthrough capitalism. Bhutan’s call to measure progress by gross national happiness (GNH), rather than the narrow metric of gross domestic product (GDP), is now attracting attention around the globe. …
Social Innovation In Development: A Call To Break Down Silos, John A. Donaldson, Victoria Gerrard, Sanushka Mudaliar
Social Innovation In Development: A Call To Break Down Silos, John A. Donaldson, Victoria Gerrard, Sanushka Mudaliar
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What distinguishes “social innovation” from other efforts to address social problems? And why should the answer matter to anyone genuinely interested in social change? The authors offer an in-depth discussion of the possibilities and pitfalls of pursuing social innovation in the context of international development.
Global Companies And Global Society: The Evolving Social Contract, Ann Florini
Global Companies And Global Society: The Evolving Social Contract, Ann Florini
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Globalization, privatization, and CHANging ideas about the roles of business and government are transforming the social contract under which business is allowed to operate. Global companies are also policy-makers and public goods providers, governments seek profits through state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds, and everyone is trying to figure out how to partner with everyone else. As a result of global economic and social integration, more and more of the business-society interaction has played out at a transnational rather than purely national level, involving transnational corporations, transnational civil society networks and organizations, and inter-governmental organizations. Experiments with codes of conduct, …
Reforming China's State-Owned Farms: State Farms In Agrarian Transition, Qian Forrest Zhang
Reforming China's State-Owned Farms: State Farms In Agrarian Transition, Qian Forrest Zhang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
China’s 2000 strong state-owned farms are experiencing a dual transition in the country’s economic reforms: the market transition (from state-owned enterprises embedded in the redistributive system to independent enterprises in the new market economy) and agrarian transition (from small-scale, household-based agriculture to large-scale, capitalist forms of agriculture that rely on market exchanges of land, labor and products). This paper highlights the results of a comparative analysis of the state farms and rural farming households in the agrarian transition to address the theoretical debate about agrarian transition. Using field research data from state farms in HeilongJIANG Province and drawing extensively from …
Tourism, Development And Poverty Reduction In Guizhou And Yunnan, John A. Donaldson
Tourism, Development And Poverty Reduction In Guizhou And Yunnan, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
How did the differing strategies adopted to develop tourism in Guizhou and Yunnan affect patterns of economic development and poverty reduction? The answer is paradoxical. Both provincial governments incorporated tourism as part of their overall development strategies, but their tourism sites were distributed and structured strikingly differently. In Yunnan, although tourism contributed to rapid economic growth, it did not reduce rural poverty as much as might be expected from a large rural-based industry. By contrast, Guizhou's relatively small-scale tourism industry, although not contributing significantly to growth, was distributed largely in poor areas and was structured to allow poor people to …