Corporate Governance in Asia’s Emerging Markets – an Overview

Corporate Governance (CG) has been viewed by many in the Western world as a particularly Western concept and mechanism. Current expectations by executive management groups of their Board run the gamut of “sober second thought” and conservative oversight focused on compliance issues, through involvement in strategy development and direction, to daily consultation on operational strategy implementation. The challenge along all points of this spectrum is the balance between independence and discipline on the one hand and self-interests of the Board members in the overall success of the corporation, from both a financial and an ego perspective. This article outlines key findings resulting from focused interviews and in-depth reviews of research related to the practice of corporate governance in Asia. Interviews were conducted in Hong Kong (6) and Malaysia (12) and focused on CG in those two countries. The goal was to establish areas of consistency or divergence from findings in the interviews. Findings indicate that CG continues to struggle in areas of transparency and limited independence of Board members. Increased legislation in the focal countries studied (Malaysia and Hong Kong) has helped, but progress has been slow.corporate governance; transparency; Hong Kong; Malaysia; minority shareholders.

A Portrait of Child Poverty in Germany

This paper offers a descriptive portrait of income poverty among children in Germany between the early 1980s and 2001, with a focus on developments since unification in 1991. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are used to estimate poverty rates, rates of entry to and exit from poverty, and the duration of time spent in and out of poverty. The analysis focuses upon comparisons between East andWest Germany,by family structure, and citizenship status. Child poverty rates have drifted upward since 1991, and have been increasing more than the rates for the overall population since the mid-1990s. In part these changes are due to increasing poverty among children from households headed by non-citizens. Children in single parent households are by all measures at considerable risk of living in poverty. There are also substantial differences in the incidence of child poverty and its dynamics between East and West Germany.Poverty dynamics, poverty duration, immigrant households

Remedial Solution Proposed Via Brain Research

Students enter higher education requiring remediation before they can be expected to be successful as they progress through their courses. The students enter from many different high schools with a variety of personal backgrounds. It is the job of leadership in institutions of higher education to suggest attributes of general education programs that are likely to be successful in increasing student learning and enhancing the likelihood of transferring knowledge from developmental classes to later programs of study

Power and Relationship: Two Elements of the Chinese/Western Divide

The day on which Zhang Wei Gou met John Redmann was fateful in many ways. Zhang had worked for many years at a small paper factory in Shanxie province. He had a good reputation as a manager of people but the State-owned factory in which he worked was small and very inefficient. Production quality was low, processes were not well thought out and the workers in general were not much interested in improving things. Zhang was frustrated both with his leaders' inability to improve conditions at the factory and with his own inability to change things despite his good relations with the workers. He decided in the summer of 1996 to xiahie (to take a job in the private sector). He quickly found a supervisory job in a China-Canadian joint venture in the nearby city of Xian

E is for Elephant, J is for Jackass: The Role of Politics in Education

K-12 institutions find themselves under the realm of No Child Left Behind. A central question is, “What does this really mean in terms of the educational world?” State legislatures are more and more influencing the organization and operation of institutions of higher education. It seems that the roles assumed by individuals in education and the roles assumed by individuals in politics have taken drastic, if not cataclysmic changes. No Child Left Behind and state-mandated funding formulas (to mention only a few) are not the only times in which educators and institutions have found themselves inundated by politics. The days of the small, one-roomed, red-bricked school house have definitely come and gone. In its place have arisen the multi-leveled acropolises we now call “P.S. something or other.” Gone are the days of small agricultural colleges. These small A&M institutes are now supplanted by the million-student universities. Cities have grown and with this growth have come more and more students for fewer and fewer teachers. Something or someone had to step in. The question is, “Were the politicians or the politics (the laws, the court cases) the right choice?” The paper to follow will delve into the role of politics in education historically, currently, and in the future by looking at Supreme Court decisions, State and Federal laws, as well as teacher opinions using one of the basest cornerstones of education, the ABCs (some letters omitted or “left behind”). Simple overviews of incidents of politics and education meeting will be displayed with author conclusions and opinions reserved until the end

Psychiatry, objectivity, and realism about value

Discussions of diagnosis in mental illness are still beset by the suspicion that ‘value judgements’ are in some special sense ‘subjective’. The history of the debate about the reality of mental illness has seen a divide between those who accept that diagnosis is ‘value-laden’ and therefore accept a relativist/subjectivist account of mental illness, and those who feel the need to deny the value-laden nature of diagnosis to defend the reality of mental illness. More nuanced analyses note that (a)all medical diagnosis is arguably value-laden & (b)this does not imply that medical conditions are unreal. All judgement (about value or fact) requires a subject, but it does not follow that it is ‘subjective’ in any sense implying ontological relativity. The implications are substantial: either all medical judgement is relative (a thesis we argue is counter-intuitive and deeply problematic) or realism about value is true. To justify our claims in diagnosis, we need to discuss and defend our value-judgements. We must reject ‘scientism’ for an openly value-laden account of human functioning. Medical epistemology (including the epistemology of mental illness) requires value-realism. The contentious nature of the value-judgements in the case of mental illness should not mislead us into concluding they are relative

The Global Youth Media Council: Young People Speaking and Learning about Media Reform

The 5th World Summit on Media for Children and Youth held in Karlstad, Sweden in June 2010 provided a unique media literacy experience for approximately thirty young people from diverse backgrounds through participation in the Global Youth Media Council. This article focuses on the Summit’s aim to give young people a ‘voice’ through intercultural dialogue about media reform. The accounts of four young Australians are discussed in order to consider how successful the Summit was in achieving this goal. The article concludes by making recommendations for future international media literacy conferences involving young people. It also advocates for the expansion of the Global Youth Media Council concept as a grass roots movement to involve more young people in discussions about media reform