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The growing awareness of climate risks associated with food safety issues has drawn the attention of stakeholders urging the food industry to carry out a sustainable food safety management system (FSMS). This study aims to investigate whether the critical success factors (CSFs) of sustainable FSMS can contribute to achieving climate neutrality, and how the adoption of FSMS 4.0 supported by the Industry Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) technologies moderates the impact of the CSFs on achieving climate neutrality.

Survey data from 255 food production firms in China and Vietnam were utilised for the empirical analysis. The research hypotheses were examined using structural equations modelling (SEM) with route analysis and bootstrapping techniques.

The results show that top management support, human resource management, infrastructure and integration appear as the significant CSFs that directly impact food production firms in achieving climate neutrality. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the adoption of FSMS 4.0 integrated with the three components (ecosystems, quality standards and robustness) significantly moderates the impact of the CSFs on achieving climate neutrality with lower inputs in human resources, infrastructure investment, integration and external assistance, and higher inputs in strengthening food safety administration.

This study provides empirical findings that fill the research gap in understanding the relationship between climate neutrality and the CSFs of sustainable FSMS while considering the moderating effects of the FSMS 4.0 components. The results provide theoretical and practical insights into how the food production sector can utilise IR 4.0 to attain sustainable FSMS for achieving climate neutrality.

Blockchain-based traceability technology (BTT) is an emerging digital technology that claims to have the potential to fulfil the demand for traceability to safeguard fruit safety. Drawing on the technological, organisational and environmental (TOE) framework, this study aims to investigate the perceived facilitators and barriers that influence the behavioural intentions of multiple stakeholders in the Vietnamese fruit supply chain (i.e., farmers, trading enterprises and consumers) to adopt BTT.

This study utilised a qualitative approach of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 60 stakeholders in the Vietnamese fruit supply chain to achieve the research objectives. NVivo 12 was employed to analyse the collected data using content and thematic analysis.

The findings identify several perceived facilitators that motivate BTT adoption. These include trust, transparency, business performance, the formation of alliances, consumer awareness of food safety and ethical agricultural practices, fruit branding and the pivotal role of farmers' cooperatives. Meanwhile, the perceived barriers to BTT adoption include a lack of digital literacy amongst the stakeholders, poor organisational culture, the high cost of traceability-enabled products and data privacy and security governance.

This study suggests that technology awareness and perceived facilitators and barriers should be incorporated into the design and deployment of blockchain-based traceability technology in the agri-food supply chain in developing countries.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first qualitative paper that attempts to fill the research gap of understanding the perceived facilitators and barriers that influence the intentions of multiple stakeholders in the fruit supply chain to adopt BTT in the context of a developing economy.

This paper aims to examine the level of information and communication technology (ICT) outsourcing and its determinants in the Malaysian locally owned manufacturing firms. Drawing on the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory, four determinants – asset specificity, uncertainty, business skills and technical skills – were hypothesized to influence ICT outsourcing.

Data were collected using a questionnaire survey from 104 manufacturing firms listed on the Directory of Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. Data were then analyzed using R package partial least squares path modeling.

The study reveals that slightly over two-thirds (68 per cent) of the surveyed manufacturers either fully or partially outsourced their ICT services. Asset specificity and uncertainty are found to be positively related to the level of ICT outsourcing, which contradict the prediction of the transaction cost theory. On the other hand, business skills and technical skills are not significantly related to the level of ICT outsourcing, which also conflict the resource-based arguments.

The small sample size would not be able to make meaningful conclusion for the population; the small R² value indicates that other important determinants of ICT outsourcing were not tested in this study, and the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory do not adequately predict the level of ICT outsourcing in the Malaysian locally owned manufacturers.

The study serves as one of the first studies that tested the determinants of ICT outsourcing using the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory in locally owned manufacturing firms of a developing country.

Corruption was a serious problem in Singapore during the British colonial period and especially after the Japanese Occupation (February 1942–August 1945) mainly because of the lack of political will to curb it by the incumbent governments. In contrast, the People’s Action Party (PAP) government, which assumed office in June 1959 after winning the May 1959 general election, demonstrated its political will with the enactment of the Prevention of Corruption Act (POCA) in June 1960, which strengthened the capacity of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) to combat corruption effectively. Indeed, Singapore’s success in curbing corruption is reflected in its consistently high scores on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from 1995 to 2012 as the least corrupt country in Asia. Singapore was ranked first with Denmark and New Zealand in the 2010 CPI with a score of 9.30. Similarly, Singapore has been ranked first in the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) annual surveys on corruption from 1995 to 2013. Why has Singapore succeeded in minimizing the problem of corruption when many other Asian countries have failed to do so? What lessons can these countries learn from Singapore’s experience in combating corruption? This chapter addresses these two questions by first describing Singapore’s favorable policy context, followed by an identification of the major causes of corruption during the British colonial period and Japanese Occupation, and an evaluation of the PAP government’s anti-corruption strategy.

To date, low-cost housing held under the common-property regime is faced with various collective action or management issues in relation to common facilities. Understanding and unpacking key collective action components in a multi-dimensional and systematic fashion that help explain the status quo of the complex low-cost housing management is crucial, particularly in identifying potential factors contributing to the suboptimal self-governing outcome. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the collective action of low-cost housing in Malaysia using Ostrom's institutional analysis development and social-ecological system framework (IAD-SES framework) as a theoretical framework.

First, a mixed-method research design was adopted where issues relating to the management of common properties of low-cost housing were identified in the Malaysian context. Second, the components of Ostrom's IAD framework relevant to collective action were identified. Third, after interviewing six experts in the housing industry via semi-structured interviews, two more components (historical development/adaptability to new environment and ethnicity) were added to the questionnaire survey. From here, 633 respondents who lived in four low-cost housings in Kuala Lumpur from 1,598 households were surveyed in 2012. We then merged the IAD framework with the SES framework. Factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha analysis were conducted to uncover the underlying variables and the social ecological clusters that they belonged.

With average Cronbach's alpha of 0.83, the seven key SES components identified are able to cumulatively explain 71% variance of local collective action components. Based on the cumulative percentage explained, the top five key SES components are as follows: context (social, economic and political settings); ethnicity; outcome; resource system; and users characteristics.

This study identifies key components related to the collective action issues of low-cost housing management, where two additional components were also suggested to be added to the SES framework. Apart from the theoretical contribution, the study, serving as insights and potential solutions, is also of practical significance to the existing management practices of low-cost housing in Malaysia where policymakers and management corporations may prioritize primary SES components, helping them govern common properties more efficiently.

Singapore is perceived to be the least corrupt country in Asia according to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from 1995 to 2010. In 2010, Singapore was ranked joint first with Denmark and New Zealand among 178 countries on the CPI with a score of 9.3. However, this does not mean that corruption does not exist in Singapore, which has its share of corruption scandals too. Indeed, the scandal involving Teh Cheang Wan attracted a great deal of attention because he was the Minister for National Development in Singapore from 1979 to 1986.

The purpose of this paper is to explore humanities teachers’ perceptions of patriotism in Singapore by addressing two questions. First, what are teachers’ understandings of patriotism? Second, what are teachers’ attitudes toward patriotism as a quality of good citizenship?

The qualitative case study approach was used, with semi-structured interviews and classroom observations as data sources. The participants were four teachers from diverse backgrounds with distinct perceptions of patriotism. Data analysis methods included writing teacher profiles and thematic coding.

Teachers were generally positive toward patriotism and understood it in four ways: cosmopolitan, nationalistic, social-movement and person oriented. These themes were not mutually exclusive but distributed across the participants in varying extents. These findings show that patriotism is susceptible to individual meaning-making, and there are different scales and expressions of patriotism.

The results from this small case study cannot be generalized. However, owing to globalization, it is likely that alternative ways of understanding patriotism might become more widespread and salient in citizenship education. Hence, the authors recommend that more studies be conducted on larger samples and using other methods.

This study goes in-depth into a case where teachers had positive feelings toward patriotism, and it draws on the context of Singapore to understand how and why this is so. It also revealed conceptions of patriotism that differ from the more common constructs in the educational literature, suggesting that people from post-colonial countries with different histories, might conceive of patriotism differently from others.

Corruption has been defined in different ways by various scholars and organizations according to cultural, legal, or other factors (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2008, p. 22). The word “corruption” is derived from the Latin word corruptus and, according to the dictionary, it has six possible meanings: dishonesty for personal gain; depravity; undesirable change; corrupting of something; altered word or phrase; or rotting.¹ However, the most useful typology of contemporary social science definitions of corruption is Arnold J. Heidenheimer's typology of three major types of definitions (Heidenheimer, 1970, pp. 4–6).

Increasing overhang of serviced apartments poses a serious concern to the national property market. This study aims to examine the impacts of macroeconomic determinants, namely, gross domestic product (GDP), consumer confidence index (CF), existing stocks (ES), incoming supply (IS) and completed project (CP) on serviced apartment price changes.

To achieve more accurate, quality price changes, a serviced apartment price index (SAPI) was constructed through a self-developed hedonic price index model. This study has collected 1,567 transaction data in Kuala Lumpur, covering 2009Q1–2018Q4 for price index construction and data were analysed using the vector autoregressive model, the vector error correction model and the fully modified ordinary least squares (OLS) (FMOLS).

Results of the regression model show that only GDP, ES and IS were significantly associated with SAPI, with an R² of 0.7, where both ES and IS have inverse relationships with SAPI. More precisely, it is predicted that the price of serviced apartments will be reduced by 0.56% and 0.21% for every 1% increase in ES and IS, respectively.

Therefore, government monitoring of serviced apartments’ future supply is crucial by enforcing land use-planning regulations via stricter development approval of serviced apartments to safeguard and achieve more stable property prices.

By adopting an innovative approach to estimating the response of price change to supply and demand in a situation where there is no price indicator for serviced apartments, the study addresses the knowledge gap, especially in terms of understanding what are the key determinants of, and to what extent they influence, the SAPI.

The purpose of this study is to examine the key factors that influence the housing preferences of young civil servants in Malaysia.

A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 400 respondents who fulfilled the eligibility criteria of civil servant working in Malaysia aged between 20 and 40 years, and currently renting a house, or staying with friends, immediate family or relatives. Data were analysed via exploratory factor analysis and Pearson correlation.

The results reveal that financial capability is the factor that most strongly influences the housing preferences of young civil servants, followed by neighbourhood and location. Young civil servants are highly inclined to consider the monthly repayment amount as the most important issue when deciding to buy a house. Furthermore, they prefer to buy a house in a neighbourhood that ensures high security and protection against crime.

Housing developers should develop affordable housing in suitable neighbourhoods and locations to match homebuyers’ preferences to avoid a mismatch between housing demand and supply, which is obviously one of the greater risks of unsold homes.

Given the lack of focus on this precise research sample (i.e. young civil servants), the study is justified in terms of its originality, as it examines a specific cohort by focussing on the correlations of location, financial capability and neighbourhood with housing preferences of young civil servants in Malaysia. These insights are invaluable, as this group has not been the specific focus of research.