Decision-making about the adoption of information technology in social welfare agencies: some key considerations

Government and non-government social welfare agencies have invested heavily in information technology, such as electronic information systems (IS) but evaluations have shown that they may undermine rather than support frontline practice. In this article, the findings of research in which senior managers and information technology managers were asked to reflect on why a particular application failed to achieve its aims are presented. The insights they provide can be used to guide future decision-making about the adoption of information technology.     

Housing price, elderly dependency and fertility behaviour

Sustaining declines in fertility have increasingly become an alarming issue in most of the world economies. Many governments have been making enormous efforts to alleviate such intertwined problems as falling fertility and soaring elderly dependency. What really makes fertility rates fall? Does housing price have a role (as many argue)? Most researchers addressed this issue from a demographic perspective, but have yet to fully unravel the mystery of human fertility behaviour. The paper aims to investigate the novel linkages between birth rate, housing price and elderly dependency, with the case of Hong Kong. It employs two key methods: (i) the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) to co-integration procedure and (ii) Granger causality, to disentangle the complicated relationships, long-run and short-run. The empirical results show that a 1 percent increase in housing prices and elderly leads to 0.52% and 1.65% decreases in birth rate respectively. Besides, both housing price and elderly dependency Granger cause birth rate in the long-run. Our findings not only shed light on fertility behaviour, but also provide implications for policy change. That is particularly relevant to those economies whose low fertility situations need to be ameliorated.     

Indonesian Chinese in Hong Kong: re-migration,re-establishment of livelihood and belonging

This paper describes the re-migration and adjustment of Indonesian Chinese to living in Hong Kong and their cultural belonging to Hong Kong, China, and Indonesia. Known in China as guiqiao or ‘Returned Overseas Chinese’, these were Chinese who re-migrated from Indonesia to mainland China in the 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1970s, many were allowed to migrate to Hong Kong. Although arriving with very little money, many have succeeded in establishing a fairly good life in Hong Kong, although there are also many who survive on low incomes. This paper discusses the experiences of the Indonesian Chinese in relation to local and transnational belonging, the perception of homelands, and the re-establishment of a Southeast Asian lifestyle in Hong Kong.     

Validation of the Career‐Related Parent Support Scale Among Chinese High School Students

The Career‐Related Parent Support Scale (CRPSS; Turner, Alliman‐Brissett, Lapan, Udipi, & Ergun, 2003 ) was translated and modified to form the 24‐item Chinese version of the scale. As in the case of the original CRPSS, the Chinese version includes 4 subscales (Instrumental Assistance, Emotional Support, Verbal Encouragement, and Career‐Related Modeling). The Chinese version of the CRPSS was validated in this study with a sample of Hong Kong high school students (N= 677). Reliability analyses showed that the total scale and subscales were internally consistent. The results of the exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the Chinese version of the CRPSS provided adequate indicators of Chinese adolescents’ perceptions of parent support for their career aspirations.     

Hesitant Madams in a Global City: Japanese Expat Wives and their Global Householding in Hong Kong

Care work, once a sanctioned labor of love, is increasingly commodified in transnational contexts. The picture of migrant women shouldering the housework and child care of local professonal women may seem like a mutually beneficial arrangement—matching the “needs” of the haves and have-nots—, but the global care chain ultimately works to maintain the traditional gendered division of labor as well as global inequality. To this trend of globalization of care work, Japan has been an exception; however, how much longer it will be so is now in a question, as the government paves the way for importing domestic labor from abroad. This article focuses on Japanese expat wives in Hong Kong in order to locate Japanese women vis-à-vis the global care chain. The narrative analysis on how they decide whether to hire a domestic worker in their home away from home highlights the sociopolitical nature of their supposedly private choices. Some drew on cultural ideal of wifehood and motherhood to rationalize their choice while others referred to racialized or even overtly racist and classist images of foreign domestic workers. A few women spoke against the system itself, showing awareness of its inherent social injustice. All such narratives are never purely personal; their decisions and the rationalization behind them sustain the prevailing discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and class, which, in turn, envelop their attempts at global householding.     

Teaching Islam to educate multiethnic and multicultural literacy: seeking alternative discourse and global pedagogies in the Chinese context

In the post-9/11 era, growing scholarly literature and social concern have focused on Islamic education in Muslim-majority countries and for Muslim minorities in the West. However, public attention and academic research concerning the teaching of Islam as a world religion and a commonly shared human civilization, are barely understood in secular contexts and in public education. This issue requires more attention, especially in Asia. For the sake of future dialogue and further discussion, this paper is a tentative attempt at initiating this understudied issue of teaching Islam as multicultural literacy. It inquires about the pedagogy of teaching Islam in an East Asian context by first briefly reflecting on the dilemmas of introducing Islam to the West and its implications for the university curriculum. Departing from the experience in North America and European societies, this article then attempts to explore alternative pedagogical discourse in teaching Islam to Chinese students in the East Asian context by considering its specific geographical position in global politics and the recent development of Hong Kong. This article finally foresees the developing pedagogy of Islamic teaching that challenges students to break away from the media cliché and apathy towards human suffering, leading them to understand that they themselves are the potential peacemakers of a future global multiethnic and multicultural society.     

On Becoming a Stepparent

Data derived from a qualitative study with 32 remar- ried couples (N = 64), were analyzed to assess factors related to the adoption of alternative stepparenting styles. Five stepparent styles were found: the biological parent, the "super good" stepmother, the detached, the uncertain, and the friendship style. The choice of styles was influenced bv the various expectations and behaviors of the step- parent, stepchild,-spouse, and nonresidential parent. Implications fbr familv education and counseling approaches with stepfamilies are discuked.     

Adoption of ride-sharing apps by Chinese taxi drivers and its implication for the equality and wellbeing in the sharing economy

The adoption of ride-sharing apps is critical to the survival of taxi drivers in the mobile-driven sharing economy. Based on survey data collected from 1195 licensed taxi drivers in Beijing, the authors present an integrated technology adoption model that combines technology and use factors (perceived usefulness and ease of use), social factors (word-of-mouth, peer adoption and subjective norms), system factors (socioeconomic and digital inequality), and audience factors (demographic characteristics and innovative personality traits). The results showed that adoption was innate, inherited, and socially driven. Adoption was positively associated with income, access to technologies, innovative personality trait, peer adoption, word-of-mouth, and perceived usefulness of the apps. The implications of the findings for inequality in the sharing economy are discussed.     

Exploring school ethos: an investigation of children’s human rights in two secondary institutions in Hong Kong

From 2009 to 2011, the authors launched the Basic Law Education Project: Education for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. This article focuses on a subset of the overarching data-set and discusses the findings that resulted from a comparative analysis of two participating schools. A survey was deployed to assess the extent to which a human rights friendly ethos existed in several institutions. Randomly selected students and all teachers from both schools were invited to participate. The collected data revealed noteworthy trends in mean scores between teachers and students in areas such as equal and fair treatment; protection of and appeal for rights; and feelings of being loved, respected, and blessed. School mission and leadership style appeared to account for significant differences. Additionally, we offer recommendations for practices that may improve human rights ethos in schools.     

Integrating the gender dimension in teaching,research content & knowledge and technology transfer: Validating the EFFORTI evaluation framework through three case studies in Europe

Gender equality and gender mainstreaming in research is one of the six European Research Area (ERA) priorities. Integrating the gender dimension in research content and teaching is one of its three objectives. It is arguably the objective where least progress has been made. In this article we contribute to the evidence base by applying the EFFORTI evaluation framework to three empirical case study interventions that aim to integrate the gender dimension in tertiary education and research content. Comparison is based on an evaluation of the design of the intervention, those factors that have enabled/ hindered its implementation as well as an assessment of outcomes and impacts. The findings of the case studies highlight the importance of design, specifically regarding resources, legal status and the definition and operationalisation of the gender concept. Implementation hinges on top-level institutional commitment and mainstreaming gender studies with support of a central unit and crucially gender competence. A lack of recognition and status of gender studies and subsequent innovations was seen to hamper implementation. Outcomes and impacts included an increased awareness and interest in gender, increased gender competence, a push towards gender equality regarding representation and organisational change as well as an improved accreditation process and more and better research.