Search

The objectives of this study were to explore the multicultural acceptance of college students toward new immigrants and its influencing factors, the cognitive discrepancy between college students and new immigrants, and the reasons why college students exhibit prejudice, stereotypes, and social distance toward new immigrants. The questionnaire survey approach was applied for data collection. It was found that the stereotype of college students toward new immigrants was relatively positive. College students recorded a high multicultural acceptance toward new immigrants. However, in addition to the stereotype of college students toward new immigrants, there were significant differences regarding the cognition of college students and new immigrants. The results of this study confirmed the hypothesis that stereotype, prejudice, and social distance have significantly negative influence on multicultural acceptance. The findings of this study revealed that Taiwan is an immigrant society, and there should be greater tolerance and respect for married immigrants, to prevent conflicts between different ethnic groups. A good multicultural education would help Taiwan society accept new immigrants and establish social harmony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an ongoing project, emerging market (EM) evaluation project, of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER). The purpose of this project is to construct a composite indicator (CI) named as growth potential index (GPI) for selecting the promising EMs, in which to begin new or expand existing business is attractive to governments, firms, and investors. However, weight determination is one of the most difficult tasks in the construction process of a CI. A new approach inspired by the Z score and rooted in data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed to objectively determine the common weights for constructing the GPI without requiring data normalisation beforehand. The same dataset is used to compare the proposed common weight approach with the equal weighting method (currently used by the TIER), the widely used DEA-CI model, and the first common weight DEA-CI model. Spearman’s rank correlation test revealed a high positive correlation between the GPIs obtained by the proposed approach and each considered method. The major findings include: (1) China is the most promising EM; (2) Argentina, China, Malaysia, Poland, and Russia are above-average EMs; (3) India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Thailand are below-average EMs; and (4) of the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), China is the best EM, and India is the worst EM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital is a source of competitive advantage for organizations, in which education and training play important roles in the process of increasing the quality and quantity of human capital. Specifically, large-scale multinationals use systemized, structured methods to establish education and training systems. By studying the employees in a major food company in China, this paper is to investigate the influence of education and training on employees' work attitudes and the moderating effect of supervisors' attitudes. It is found that education and training have a positive influence on employees' work attitudes. Among the training courses, the training of managerial ability has the most significant influence, followed by self-development courses. In addition, supervisors' attitudes toward employees receiving managerial ability training, during and after the training, clearly have a positive moderating effect on employees' overall work attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public security, traffic management, and service for the people are the 3 major functions of policing in Taiwan. This definition encompasses not only the traditional job characteristics, but also the level of contextual characteristics and social characteristics because of police work's characteristics and its frequent interaction with the public. Thus, the present study conducted a multilevel model analysis by taking self-efficacy and collective efficacy as the mediating variables. The purpose was to investigate the influences of motivational work characteristics (knowledge-oriented) and social work characteristics (socially and contextually oriented) of work-design model on the police officers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), by using first-line police officers in Taiwan as the research objects. The study showed not only that knowledge characteristics will influence the self-efficacy of a police officer and that self-efficacy can in turn influence individual police officers' OCB, but also the contextual effect of social characteristics, contextual characteristics, and collective efficacy on self-efficacy and individuals' OCB. Additionally, there was a crosslevel moderating effect from contextual characteristics on the relationship between knowledge characteristics and self-efficacy and the relationship between self-efficacy and the individuals' OCB. The authors conclude the article with research implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of work characteristics on members' self-efficacy and collective efficacy, and the subsequent effect on police officers' performance. Design/methodology/approach – A multilevel model is adopted to analyze quantitative data obtained by using 812 police officers and 54 chiefs of police stations in Taiwan as the research objects. Findings – The authors found that work characteristics affected members' self-efficacy and collective efficacy, which further affected the individual- and group-level performance and the contextual effect of social work characteristics (SWCs) and collective efficacy on self-efficacy and individual performance. The authors also confirmed the cross-level moderation of social characteristics on the relationship between motivational work characteristics (MWCs) and self-efficacy, and between self-efficacy and individual performance. Research limitations/implications – A limitation was the characteristics of the sample, which consisted of mostly first-line uniformed police officers in Taiwan. From the perspective of managerial implications, it is felt that police organizations should beef up the training on police officers' collective efficacy, such as building group spirit, improving members' sense of responsibility, and building up trust with the organization. Originality/value – The findings prove that the study of work design is particularly important for enhancing the management effectiveness of police organization, because it explains the causes of a number of organizational behaviors as well as a number of important results that influence the police organization (e.g. efficacy and performance). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]