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PurposeThe purpose is to verify the OTC of Taiwan coast guard organizations and to explore whether the views of coast guard personnel on the trust of supervisors, colleagues and subordinates are consistent based on vertical or horizontal relationship in the organization.Design/methodology/approachThis is an empirical study conducted with 412 participants from Taiwan coast guard organizations.FindingsThe main finding of this study was that, in Taiwan coast guard organizations, there are differences in the perceptions of organizational trust contents (OTC) in different measuring subjects that are nonexistent in previous studies on other cultures. In particular, the recognition of organizational trust (OT) in subordinates was higher than that in colleagues, while the recognition of OT in colleagues was higher than that in supervisors. Furthermore, measuring the same object with different dimensions, it was found that the OT of colleagues' honest negotiation was significantly higher than those of “not to take excessive advantage (NTEA)” and “keep commitments.” There was no difference in recognition of the three dimensions for subordinates and supervisors.Originality/valueThe result confirms the structure of the Organizational Trust Inventory model of Taiwan coast guard organizations. In addition, Chinese culture evidently influences the weight on each of the contracting behaviors expected of different referents; particularly, trustworthy subordinates are more expected to exhibit good contracting behaviors than supervisors and coworkers. This study contributes to the understanding of how to foster trust in terms of good contracting behaviors in Taiwan coast guard organizations.

This study aimed to construct a transboundary marine governance mechanism in the Kinmen-Xiamen Waters through literature review, field survey, in-depth interview, and expert opinion survey. The study finding that monsoons, ocean currents and tides are the main factors affecting the drift of marine debris in the Xiamen Sea area to the beaches of Kinmen. The marine debris mainly included marine plastic debris (MPD), bamboo and wood in Kinmen, and was documented impacting a variety of species, including thehorseshoe crab to marine mammals the IndoPacific dolphin. In addition, the problem of marine micro-plastic pollution is becoming increasingly worrisome, and hazardous to rare creatures in the Xiamen Sea area. The pollution sources of MPD in Xiamen Bay included coastal tourism activities, micro-plastic discharged from sewage treatment plants, plastic waste produced by lost and discarded marine aquaculture and plastic drifting terrestrial waste transported by from the Jiulong River Basin.

This study was conducted to confirm the applicability of OTC (organizational trust content) in Chinese organizations via the OTI (organizational trust inventory) developed by Cummings and Bromiley (1996). This study explored the vertical and horizontal trust relationships that exist among supervisors, subordinates and colleagues of equal standing through focused interviews and questionnaires to recognize and assess OTC. The results showed that in situations with a high degree of OT (organizational trust), three dimensions coexist namely: 1) the ability to keep commitments, 2) the ability to negotiate honestly, and 3) the ability to NTEA (not taking excessive advantage). Each dimension includes three trust elements: cognition, affection, and intended behavior. Different measuring subjects have significantly different perceptions of OTC, with subordinate recognition being the most trustworthy. At the same time, the integrity performance of colleagues is the most recognized element. Though OTC is applicable in Chinese organizations, the degree of subordinate recognition and the ability to negotiate honestly between colleagues are affected by the “respectful superior and inferior subordinate” relationship and the hierarchical authority, which exist in Chinese culture.

Mainland China’s economy has been developing rapidly. Unfortunately, it has led to an increase in municipal and industrial waste, including in Xiamen, in which is has greatly increased. Kinmen is located outside the estuary of the Jiulong River in Fujian, Mainland China, opposite to Xiamen Bay. Whenever there is heavy rainfall, the waste that flows along the Jiulong River is incredible. Kinmen unavoidably has to bear the invasion of floating marine debris due to the effect of ocean currents, tides and monsoons. It does not only pollute the Kinmen sea area, but it also affects the scenery of the beaches in Kinmen. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the data of Kinmen and Xiamen governments regarding the cleaning of floating marine debris, and the differences in distribution areas according to the monsoon, ocean current and tides. In-depth interviews, field investigation, and collection of expert opinions were applied in order to determine the research implication. The results of this study provide information on the marine issues encountered in the governance of the countries surrounding the sea. The study suggests that the transboundary marine governance mechanism should be established in order to effectively solve the problem of floating marine debris in Kinmen–Xiamen Waters. For the welfare of the people, it is expected that the governments of Mainland China and Taiwan will uphold the principle of “pragmatism and reciprocity” by working together to maintain the marine environment in Kinmen–Xiamen waters.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the causal correlation between the work stress of immigration officers (IOs) and the cross-level effect of social support.Design/methodology/approachA multilevel model was used to analyze the quantitative data obtained from 231 IOs in Taiwan, who served as the research objects.FindingsFrom the results of this study, it was found that a positive significant relationship existed between role conflict and work stress, as well as between work stress and job burnout. Also, cross-level context and moderating effect for the relationship between social support and work stress, as well as between social support, work stress and job burnout were obtained.Originality/valueThis study only considered IOs in airports and ports. Therefore, it is necessary to determine if other topics of organizational behavior, such as the leadership of supervisors, organizational climate and work values of IOs, have a positive moderating effect. In this regard, it is recommended that a longitudinal study should be conducted in the future.

Kinmen’s coastline has gradually retreated in recently years, which has resulted in changes in coastal landforms. Research shows that possible factors are ocean currents, monsoons, tides, coastal development, and other anthropic factors such as unauthorized sand mining in the sea area between Kinmen and Xiamen. This study utilized a literature analysis, data collection, in-depth interviews, a field study, and expert opinion in order to establish a managing mechanism for marine spatial planning (MSP) for the sea area between Kinmen and Xiamen. To achieve the goal, the study analyzed law enforcement capacity in the sea area between Kinmen and Xiamen and explored how Taiwan and China can shelve sovereignty disputes and make a workable action plan for cooperating in maritime law enforcement based on a pragmatic and reciprocal principle. Finally, the study proposed to build an MSP-based managing mechanism that can be jointly operated by Kinmen, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, and Quanzhou, because they belong to the same sea area. The results of this study can provide information on marine issues encountered in the governance of countries surrounding seas, such as the marine pollution problems of the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea.

The shaping of employees’ innovativeness is an important way of building a sustainable organization. Therefore, in order to have a sustainable police organization, the innovativeness of the police must be established in order to achieve the objective of maintaining law and order. In this study, Taiwan’s first-line border police officers served as the research subject, and the cross-level model perspective was adopted to investigate their innovativeness from task-oriented and socially oriented viewpoints. At the same time, investigations were made into the cross-level direct and indirect effects of social work characteristics and collective efficacy toward police officers’ self-efficacy and innovativeness. A multilevel model was adopted to analyze the quantitative data obtained with 249 border police officers in Taiwan as the research objects. The results showed that social work characteristics have a positive influence on collective efficacy, and motivational work characteristics have a positive influence on employees’ self-efficacy and innovativeness. Their self-efficacy showed a positive influence on innovativeness, and a mediating effect on the relationship between motivational work characteristics and innovativeness. Moreover, social work characteristics and collective efficacy have a cross-level contextual effect on self-efficacy and innovativeness, while social work characteristics and self-efficacy have a cross-level interaction on police officers’ innovativeness. In general, this study confirmed the importance of employees’ innovativeness for the establishment of a sustainable police organization. The characteristics of social and motivational work, self-efficacy, and collective effectiveness are important variables for establishing employees’ innovativeness.

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.

The rapid development of e-commerce in China has played a critical role in the development of the national economy and ongoing modernization. The plant industry is unique among industries that employ e-commerce sales models because its products exhibit special characteristics such as high death and damage rates. Therefore, its e-commerce and logistical requirements are stricter than in other industries and, as a result, excess warehouse storage can be extremely difficult for e-commerce–based plant shops to manage. Numerous studies have indicated the need to identify a product’s most up-to-date market conditions, as well as the type, function, and size of warehouses. Therefore, based on a case study, this study proposes an optimization plan for solving excess warehouse storage in e-commerce–based plant shops. First, sales volume data of the case company, Enterprise A, were analyzed to predict future sales. Then, entropy and the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution were used to construct the decision-making model. Finally, a cloud warehouse–based optimization plan was proposed to solve excess warehouse storage in e-commerce–based plant shops. This plan can serve as a reference for decision-makers or executives in e-commerce–based plant shops when handling excess warehouse storage.

Education and training not only play the key role to promote the sustainable ability of employees, but in the establishment of employees' work attitudes as well. Moreover, leaders play an important role in promoting the effectiveness of education and training. The objectives of this study were to explore the effect of the police department&rsquo, s annual subject training on the work attitudes of harbor police. This study also examined the moderating effect of supervisor attitudes on the association between police training effectiveness and police&rsquo, s work attitudes in expectation to more concretely understand the role of supervisor attitudes in the harbor police&rsquo, s annual subject training, to consolidate the good work attitude of the police for sustainability. The frontline police officers of Taiwan&rsquo, s harbor police agency were chosen as the study population. This study adopted the convenience sampling method to conduct the questionnaire survey in August 2019. It requested for the respondents who replied to the questionnaire within 15 days after receiving the questionnaire to be considered as the first respondents. For those who replied to the questionnaire no later than one month were considered as the second respondents. This paper collected a total of 584 questionnaires and 492 were valid. The result of this study showed that education and training had a highly positive effect on the work attitudes of police officers. Moreover, the overall attitudes of supervisors toward police education and training were found to have a significantly positive moderating effect on the association between education and training effectiveness and the police&rsquo, s work attitudes. The results of this study prove the linkage between the effectiveness of education and training and the supervisor attitudes.

In recent years, with the emergence of tablet personal computers and smartphones, information technology enterprises in Taiwan have achieved a low profit margin and have experienced competitive pressure. To arrest its decline, Taiwan’s information technology industry (ITI) must develop new products and employ different operating strategies. The merger and acquisition (M&A) strategy is one useful strategy for the growth and expansion of businesses. Many researchers have demonstrated that M&As can help enterprises build or maintain their advantageous position in the industrial life cycle. Therefore, M&As constitute an enterprise growth strategy that facilitates controllability and the most rapid growth on a business scale. In this study, we present a novel framework for evaluating M&A strategies and provide detailed computation examinations of the proposed framework, and real cases were used for the analyses. The results were consistent with those based on the proposed model. Crucially, the proposed model provides decision makers or administrators in the ITI with valuable references related to M&A or investment strategies, rendering it highly applicable for academic and management purposes.