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The Search For Meaning Amid Tasks Galore And Race To Be First, David Chan Nov 2017

The Search For Meaning Amid Tasks Galore And Race To Be First, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

For most, life is a busy pursuit.But it is good every now and then to take the time to reflect on why you dowhat you do.


Farmers' Cooperatives In China: A Typology Of Fraud And Failure, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Jul 2017

Farmers' Cooperatives In China: A Typology Of Fraud And Failure, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the 1990s, agricultural cooperatives—particularly what China calls Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives—have experienced rapid expansion in China. After more than two decades of growth and policy support, what is the overall performance of the ever-increasing numbers of these cooperatives? We visited 50 cooperatives across the country, most of which had officially been lauded as successful, to make a first-hand evaluation of their overall status and performance. We argue that, judging by either international or Chinese standards, the vast majority of these agricultural cooperatives are not authentic and fail to deliver expected benefits to smallholders. We categorize them into five types: genuine …


Preparing For Socio-Technical Transitions: Opportunities And Challenges For Policy Design, Sreeja Nair, Araz Taeihagh Jun 2017

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 Jan 2017

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 …


Practical Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, And Social Intelligence, Filip Lievens, David Chan Jan 2017

Practical Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, And Social Intelligence, Filip Lievens, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the years, practical intelligence, social intelligence, and especially emotional intelligence have received substantial attention in both the academic and practitioner literatures. However, at the same time, these individual dierence “constructs” have also fueled controversies and criticisms, including their applications to employee selection. It is without doubt that their definition, dimensionality, and operationalization (measurement) have been much more questioned as compared to the more traditional or established constructs (i.e., cognitive ability, personality) in this section of the Handbook.


Providing Rural Public Services Through Land Commodification: Policy Innovations And Rural-Urban Integration In Chengdu, Qian Forrest Zhang, Jianling Wu Dec 2016

Providing Rural Public Services Through Land Commodification: Policy Innovations And Rural-Urban Integration In Chengdu, Qian Forrest Zhang, Jianling Wu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Zhang and Wu offer a detailed account of the innovative local policies in Chengdu, China, where a national land-use policy that has created widespread problems in other trial areas has been turned into a positive, transformative force in rural reconstruction. There are three key innovations in this so-called ‘Chengdu model’: First, leveraging on the most important resource in rural area, land, and through the commodification of land development rights, creating a financial source that can fund rural public services provision; second, transforming traditional rural residential patterns and concentrating the rural population in newly built residential communities; and, finally, using both …


Advertising, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li Dec 2016

Advertising, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Advertisements, which are widely available, can provide insights into the evolved preferences of target audiences and serve as a useful supplement to other methods in evolutionary psychology research. This chapter discusses how advertisers create content that strategically exploits consumers’ values and preferences and how advertising content can provide insights into various aspects of our evolved psychology.


How Agribusiness Can Win In Partnership With Small Farms, John A. Donaldson Sep 2016

How Agribusiness Can Win In Partnership With Small Farms, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Can large-scale agribusiness reduce costs and obtain less-expensive food while also reducing poverty and inequality by engaging small-scale farmers? Many conclude that such an attractive outcome is unimaginable, but innovative pilot projects hold promise that such a reality is within reach and replicable.


Understanding The Failure Of China’S Specialized Cooperatives In China, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Apr 2016

Understanding The Failure Of China’S Specialized Cooperatives In China, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

At first blush, contemporary China seems ripe for the rapid development of agricultural cooperatives. After all, cooperatives have not only enjoyed a long history in China, but the country’s recent experience with agricultural communes should make it more amenable to the reestablishment of joint production and spontaneous bottom-up cooperation. Agricultural cooperatives in China date to the 1930s, as Rural Reconstruction Movement advocates promoted cooperatives as a “third road” between capitalism and socialism. Although Mao’s regime disbanded most bottom-up cooperatives, rural cooperatives began to reemerge in rural China by the end of the 20th century, particularly after 1998, when farmer cooperatives …


Refining The Prize: Chinese Oil Refineries And Its Energy Security, Inwook Kim Apr 2016

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 Jan 2016

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 …


On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Dec 2015

On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What are the economic, social and political effects when previously isolated villages are opened to the outside world? Scholars from different traditions expect different sorts of positive or negative affects to occur. Rural China presents an ideal environment to study this question empirically. Villages within rural China are in the process of being opened to the outside world in different forms, such as through being connected by road, the investment of agribusiness, or urbanization. Moreover this opening is being driven and shaped by different actors, including local residents, government and businesses. The different ways and actors that this opening occurs …


State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang Aug 2015

State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A government's political identity is a key factor in meta-governance; it powerfully shapes a government's policy aims and implementation preferences at the most abstract level and forms a stable governance mode. Dissonance between a pre-existing governance mode and the government's evolved political identity will lead to governance failures and pose political challenges to the government. In the case of vegetable retail in Shanghai, the neoliberal developmental state transformed the hierarchical governance into market governance; but as it evolves into a corporatist welfare state, market imperfections come to be perceived as governance failures, and the government responds by reintroducing hierarchical measures.


Rural China In Transition: Changes And Transformations In China’S Agriculture And Rural Sector, John A. Donaldson, Forrest Q. Zhang Apr 2015

Rural China In Transition: Changes And Transformations In China’S Agriculture And Rural Sector, John A. Donaldson, Forrest Q. Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Agribusiness companies operating in China are transacting in various forms with small agricultural producers, and in doing so, transforming the household-based agriculture in rural China. We argue that the presence of these distinct forms and the diverging relations between agribusiness and producers show the central importance of China’s collective land rights. China’s unique system of land rights – featuring collective ownership but individualized usage rights – has acted as a powerful force in shaping interactions between agribusiness and direct producers. It provides farmers a source of economic income as well as political bargaining power – albeit to various degrees – …


The New Capitalism: Asia And The Future Of Business, Government, And Society, Ann Florini, Bindu Sharma May 2014

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 Jan 2014

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.


Evolving Chineseness, Ethnicity And Business: The Making Of The Ethnic Chinese As A ‘Market-Dominant Minority’ In Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon Oct 2013

Evolving Chineseness, Ethnicity And Business: The Making Of The Ethnic Chinese As A ‘Market-Dominant Minority’ In Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The ethnic Chinese in Indonesia play a very significant role in the nation’s economy. Their dominance in the Indonesian economy is often seen as disproportionate to their numbers, as reflected in the popular assertion that “the Chinese constitute only 3.5 percent of the population but control 70 percent of Indonesia’s economy”. In the New York Times bestseller, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, Amy Chua (2004) identified Chinese Indonesians as one of the “ market-dominant minorities” in the world. Her book highlights the double bind of free market democracy: it privileges certain …


Many Asias But One Singapore: The Problematics Of Creative Industry, Kirpal Singh Oct 2013

Many Asias But One Singapore: The Problematics Of Creative Industry, Kirpal Singh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The author discusses issues concerning the creative industry in Singapore. He highlights a National Conversation event which features the critical role and position of the creative industry in Lion City aiming to be a global hub for the arts and culture. He also highlights the Singapore Day celebration as well as the country's relationship with the other Asian countries.


The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan Apr 2013

The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The state-monopolised system of vegetable retail in socialist urban China has transformed into a market-based system run by profit-driven actors. Publicly owned wet markets not only declined in number after the state relegated its construction to market forces, but were also thoroughly privatised, becoming venues of capital accumulation for the market operators now controlling these properties. Self-employed migrant families replaced salaried state employees in the labour force. Governments’ increased control over urban public space reduced the room for informal markets, exacerbating the scarcity of vegetable retail space. Fragmentation in the production and wholesale systems restricted modern supermarkets’ ability to establish …


Walmart In China [Book Review], John A. Donaldson Mar 2013

Walmart In China [Book Review], John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.


Global Companies And Global Society: The Evolving Social Contract, Ann Florini Mar 2013

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, …


International Conventions And The Failure Of A Transnational Approach To Controlling Asian Crime Business, Mark Findlay, Nafis Hanif Jan 2013

International Conventions And The Failure Of A Transnational Approach To Controlling Asian Crime Business, Mark Findlay, Nafis Hanif

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The paper argues that without a realistic understanding of criminal enterprise located against the commercial forces shaping contemporary Asian market contexts, then domestic, bi-lateral, regional and international control initiatives are not only likely to fail in their regulatory objectives, but the premises on which they are constructed may heighten the market conditions for crime business profitability.The international convention-based approach to regulating transnational and organized crime is the framework from which a critique of non-market centred law enforcement control concentrations is developed. This critique reveals the transposition of flawed normative control considerations from domestic to supra-national control contexts, and shows how …


Differential Impact Of Directors’ Social And Financial Capital On Corporate Interlock Formation, Nicholas Harrigan, Matthew Bond Dec 2012

Differential Impact Of Directors’ Social And Financial Capital On Corporate Interlock Formation, Nicholas Harrigan, Matthew Bond

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Exponential random graph models (ERGMs) are increasingly applied to observed network data and are central to understanding social structure and network processes. The chapters in this edited volume provide a self-contained, exhaustive account of the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of ERGMs, including models for univariate, multivariate, bipartite, longitudinal and social-influence type ERGMs. Each method is applied in individual case studies illustrating how social science theories may be examined empirically using ERGMs. The authors supply the reader with sufficient detail to specify ERGMs, fit them to data with any of the available software packages and interpret the results.


The Political Economy Of Contract Farming In China's Agrarian Transition, Qian Forrest Zhang Oct 2012

The Political Economy Of Contract Farming In China's Agrarian Transition, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How does rural China’s political economy determine the motivations and constraints that drive small farmers and agribusiness companies into contract farming and shape its practice and impact? This paper identifies three distinctive features of contract farming in China—varied impact on rural inequality, unstable contractual relations, and lack of competitiveness with other alternatives—and proposes tentative explanations with three features in rural China’s political economy: strong collective institutions, active state support for agriculture, and strong domestic markets. The recent turn in China’s agrarian transition toward vertical integration of agriculture with industries is, however, undermining these conditions and may move China toward more …


The Transformation Of China’S Agriculture System And Its Impact On Southeast Asia, Phoebe Mingxuan Luo, John A. Donaldson, Qian Forrest Zhang Aug 2011

The Transformation Of China’S Agriculture System And Its Impact On Southeast Asia, Phoebe Mingxuan Luo, John A. Donaldson, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The increased role for agribusiness and larger scale production in China’s agricultural system is limited by China’s severe lack of arable land. The Household Responsibility System provides farmers a measure of power, hampering agribusiness from acquiring land needed for expansion. Some Chinese companies have sought cheaper and often more accessible land in nearby regions, including Southeast Asia. While such investments have the potential to deliver benefits, including increased productivity, structural constraints such as weak land ownership and environmental laws, highly unequal distribution of land and underdevelopment of peasant organizations prevent many poorer farmers from benefiting from these investments.


Ovulation, Female Competition, And Product Choice: Hormonal Influences On Consumer Behavior, Kristina M. Durante, Vladas Griskevicius, Sarah E. Hill, Carin Perilloux, Norman P. Li Apr 2011

Ovulation, Female Competition, And Product Choice: Hormonal Influences On Consumer Behavior, Kristina M. Durante, Vladas Griskevicius, Sarah E. Hill, Carin Perilloux, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Recent research shows that women experience nonconscious shifts across different phases of the monthly ovulatory cycle. For example, women at peak fertility (near ovulation) are attracted to different kinds of men and show increased desire to attend social gatherings. Building on the evolutionary logic behind such effects, we examined how, why, and when hormonal fluctuations associated with ovulation influenced women's product choices. In three experiments, we show that at peak fertility women nonconsciously choose products that enhance appearance (e.g., choosing sexy rather than more conservative clothing). This hormonally regulated effect appears to be driven by a desire to outdo attractive …


From Peasants To Farmers: Peasant Differentiation, Labor Regimes, And Land-Rights Institutions In China's Agrarian Transition, Q. Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Dec 2010

From Peasants To Farmers: Peasant Differentiation, Labor Regimes, And Land-Rights Institutions In China's Agrarian Transition, Q. Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The development of factor markets has opened Chinese agriculture for the penetration of capitalism. This new round of rural transformation—China’s agrarian transition— raises the agrarian question in the Chinese context. This study investigates how capitalist forms and relations of production transform agricultural production and the peasantry class in rural China. The authors identify six forms of nonpeasant agricultural production, compare the labor regimes and direct producers’ socioeconomic statuses across these forms, and evaluate the role of China’s land-rights institution in shaping these forms. The empirical investigation presents three main findings: (1) Peasant differentiation : capitalist forms of agricultural production differentiate …


Reforming China's State-Owned Farms: State Farms In Agrarian Transition, Qian Forrest Zhang Jul 2010

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 …


The Sinification Of Western Company Forms In Modern China: A Hybridization Of Sinospheres And Anglospheres, Wai Keung Chung Jan 2010

The Sinification Of Western Company Forms In Modern China: A Hybridization Of Sinospheres And Anglospheres, Wai Keung Chung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Western company or corporate forms were introduced to China for more than a hundred years. What has been the impact of this Western institution on the traditional mode of Chinese family business? At the same time, has the traditional Chinese mode of doing business changed any of the fundamental features of this Western institution, and in the end created corporate forms with “Chinese characteristics”? This paper uses the historical sociology and economic sociology perspectives to analyse the interaction between traditional Chinese business and Western corporate forms during the late 19th earlier 20th century modern China. Traditional Chinese business convention for …


The Beginning Of The End? Agricultural Modernization And Dissolution Of The Peasantry In Contemporary China, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Jan 2010

The Beginning Of The End? Agricultural Modernization And Dissolution Of The Peasantry In Contemporary China, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.