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Employees are vital for enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty in service organizations because their proactive involvement is an essential part of delivering the services offered. With the recent rapid growth of tourism in the Macau SAR, service employee workloads are clearly increasing, and consequently one would expect that the incidence of job burnout is rising. This study uses the well-known Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to investigate the relationship between service employees' burnout and their willingness to deliver quality services. Self-administered questionnaires from 110 operational staff in three hotels in Macau have been analyzed. The results indicate that job burnout reduces staff's willingness to deliver quality services and that this effect is moderated by individual staff's level of affective organizational commitment, and their perceptions of the extent of organizational and supervisor support provided by the organization. Based on these results, practical managerial strategies to improve service performance are identified.

The importance of empowerment in service industries is recognized by practitioners and scholars in the West but there has been limited investigation of its impact on the willingness of service personnel in a high power-distance culture. This study examines how empowerment can be facilitated in the high power-distance context of China. Regression and path model analysis using a sample of 290 service employees from six 4-star to 5-star hotels in the Macau SAR China indicate that empowerment positively leads to higher service willingness and this relationship is mediated by performance-based rewards, and organizational and supervisor support. These findings have implications for HR managers considering or using empowerment.

Purpose – Given the diversity which exists among various groups of consumers, the purpose of this paper is to explore students' consumption of non‐alcoholic beverages in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – Three focus groups and 20 in‐depth interviews were conducted with students in three universities located in Lagos, Nigeria. Findings – Initial findings indicate that these students' consumption of non‐alcoholic beverages is influenced in many ways. Nevertheless, the most striking of these influences are found to be convenience of purchase, along with availability, price, health concerns, and culture/social reasons. Originality/value – The main contribution of the study lies in the relevance of segmentation, targeting, and positioning activities of business organisations in respect of marketing of non‐alcoholic beverages. Based on the findings, the empirical study will serve as a valuable input to marketers in their planning, analysis, and implementation of appropriate marketing strategies to students vis‐à‐vis the highlighted influences on their consumption of this category of food. It will thus serve as a tool for creating competitive advantage in this prevailing volatile business environment.

Information contained within documents is an essential ingredient of any office operation. A content management application (CMA) is an organization plan for the conception, use, retention, disposal and selective preservation of its data. Using an appropriate CMA framework can greatly help Macao Government agencies, for instance, that are increasingly using electronic means to create, exchange and store a major variety of records daily. By definition, a record is information, in whatever form, for government functions, activities, decisions and other important transactions. As expected, as the volume of electronic information increases, so does the complexity of managing electronic records. This project goal was to evaluate the software capabilities of the Alfresco© Enterprise Content Management (ECM) against a set of functional requirements, aimed by the Macao Government agency. Drawing on the results of this evaluation, the present analysis concludes that Alfresco© ECM is capable of supporting an entire agency needs related to the management of its records content.

Over the years Macao has been exposed to different cultures and has been influenced by various political and economic interests. The booming casino economy has ultimately transformed the city into the largest gambling hub in the world. In spite of the consensus about Macao's shiny future, there are factors (such as the large reliance on a single industry) and socio-economic problems (such as labor shortage, unequal income distribution, and inflationary pressure) that moderate the optimism. By making use of the Chatterjee and Nankervis' convergent and divergent process model for management, this paper examines how global, regional, and local forces have impacted the economic development process, form and type of organizations in Macao. The paper also suggests that the government implement a framework that develops and diversifies the economy but also takes into consideration the social needs of the community.

South Korea management system has been influenced significantly by their traditional social and religious beliefs for hundreds of years. Yet, the 1997 Asian financial crisis has gradually confirmed this shifted, from the Confucius mentality to a close Westernized system. This paper aims to evaluate this management transition in South Korea. The theoretical model of the convergent-divergent, as proposed by Chatterjee and Nankervis [2006], is applied to identify a number of critical factors. The aforementioned factors altogether have influenced the management system in four main vectors: (A) From seniority to meritocracy performance management; (B) From consultative to individualistic decision-making style; (C) From ignoring to embracing corporate governance; (D) From avoiding to improving environmental sustainability.

This chapter explores Quality of Work Life (QWL) in Macau. We investigate the meanings and importance of QWL and its implications in terms of happiness and business performance. Although QWL is central to people’s lives, research on this topic is still in its infancy in Macau. Our interviews revealed three salient themes of QWL: Work context, the perceived benefits and demands of the job; Organization, mainly work environment and factors within the organizational context mediating QWL; and the implications of QWL on overall living and happiness.

We report the initial findings of an ongoing, long-term investigation into subjective quality of life in Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China. Data were collected via quarterly public surveys (2007 to 2009; n = 8,230), as part of the Macau Quality of Life Report. The main aims of the study were to: (a) ascertain the public’s satisfaction with life and with the regional situation in Macau; (b) confirm the utility of the International Wellbeing Index (IWI) as a measure of subjective life quality; and (c) contribute to ongoing discussion in the literature on quality of life in China. The data indicated moderate levels of personal (PWI = 64.4; range 63–66.7) and national (NWI = 59.7; 57.4–63.7) wellbeing across the study period, which implies that residents in Macau are generally satisfied with life. The lowest scores were reported in the first quarter of 2009, a period of great economic uncertainty in Macau and the world, but were positioned within the normative range. The IWI demonstrated good psychometric performance, consistent with previous studies in China and the West, which confirmed its utility. These findings are discussed in relation to the IWI’s theoretical underpinnings and the literature.

We critically review studies of subjective wellbeing conducted in China by the International Wellbeing Group, and we evaluate the International Wellbeing Index (IWI), a new instrument they developed. Subjective wellbeing was positive and similar in studies across China, and conformed to the normative range. Its resilience (PWI = 61.2–67.1) mirrors survey findings conducted in Western countries, in agreement with Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis. Reliability, validity and psychometric analyses support the utility of the IWI as a measure of subjective wellbeing. Our conclusions have implications for research and social development in China, discussed further in this review.

This study analyzes the green marketing strategies with specific reference to the hotel industry. The concept of green marketing in this sector is crucial due to the growing expected importance of tourism in the future of global economy and its potential impact on social and economic development; this is true particularly in areas with relevant volumes of tourist arrivals. In this sense, we carried out an exploratory research in the hotel industry of the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Macao in order to: highlight the primary motivations that underlie interventions geared towards the eco-sustainability of hotels, the services they offer and point out the problems, issues, and future prospects in the development of green marketing, as well as explore the role of eco-sustainable values in hotels’ online communication policies. In order to reach these aims a qualitative research was carried out with a semi-structured questionnaire (face-to-face interviews) to a group of hotels. The research was finished by an analysis of their websites, in order to verify possible references to the steps taken to protect the environment.

This paper is motivated by two observations in the large civil aircraft (LCA) industry. (1) Boeing and Airbus are significantly different in the degree of offshoring. (2) The degree of offshoring also changes among different aircraft models. To offer an explanation, this paper focuses on issues related to fragmentation. Existing literature has established the tie between fragmented technology and offshoring. However, it is assumed that production can be fragmented readily and at no cost; and only exogenous global economic factors have impact on the degree of fragmentation. This model distinguishes itself from others by incorporating endogeneity in fragmentation. A final-good firm can spend on R&D specifically for its own fragmented technology. As a result, the final-good firm can optimally choose the portion of components to be offshored. A strategic trade policy model is used to show that the degree of offshoring depends on the firm's own cost of production, the host country's cost of production, the global state of technology as well as the government trade policies. In particular, export subsidy and subsidy on R&D of fragmented technology are shown to be policy substitutes. Keywords: Fragmentation; Offshoring; Outsourcing; Aircraft; Export subsidy; R&D subsidy; Boeing; Airbus JEL classification: F12; F13; F23; L13

If Australia has been subject to major influences by the United States and European countries, why is its economy healthier than their counter partners? What are the economic foundations that underline this anti-counter cycle of financial worldwide crisis from Australia? What are some of the lessons that countries from Europe that have not fared during the current financial worldwide crisis should learn from Australia? The purpose of this paper is to review the present Australian management system. Four changes are identified including embracement of corporate governance, a shift to adopt more R&D activities, a shift to adopt environmental sustainability practices and emerging corporate social responsibility. On the conclusions settings, a recap and recommendation on how Portugal, a member of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) Southern European Countries club forgot to embrace directives that have been applied in Australia, to avoid the actual financial and identity crisis.

This article explores how state and society relations have been affected by the development of information technology in China over the past 20 years. It argues that despite all the transformative changes that such technology has helped bring about, ?benefits? have to be weighed in terms of both empowerment of society and strengthening of state capacity. Ultimately, the digital challenge has not translated into a weakening of the authoritarian state, and this can be explained by the very nature of the party-state in China and how it has managed to make use of communication tools that prove to be both constructive and divisive.