Workplace violence in Hong Kong, China: nature, impact, and preparedness

This article reports a survey of workplace violence in Hong Kong. A sizable number of the 1,198 organizations that were questioned reported that they had experienced such violence over the 2 years preceding the study, but the problem was not prevalent. In both the private and government sectors, nonphysical violence happened more frequently than physical violence, and there was a reported lack of preparedness of many organizations to deal with the violence. Compared with private organizations, government organizations experienced more coworker and customer violence, but more private than government organizations believed that workplace violence caused the loss of key employees and clients. Correlation analysis found that a subculture of workplace violence appears to emerge over time, such that the more customer violence is experienced, the more is coworker violence, and the more the nonphysical violence, the more the physical violence. These findings are discussed with reference to international findings.     

Life satisfaction,self-concept,and relationship with parents in adolescence

The influence of self-concept and relationships with parents and school on life satisfaction of adolescents was explored in 1156 Chinese junior high school children in Hong Kong. Adopting the multidimensional approach, self-concept was measured globally as well as in four specific aspects, namely, academic ability, social ability, physical ability, and physical appearance. Results show that all self-concept measures are correlated with life satisfaction, but the strongest correlation was found between general self-concept and life satisfaction. This pattern is consistent with American findings in that a higher self-concept was related to more life satisfaction, but the correlation obtained was much weaker in the present study. In a series of regression analyses, it was found that relationship with parents dominated the prediction of life satisfaction, and only the social ability component of self-concept was able to account for a small amount of extra variance. Relationship with school was not related to life satisfaction in any significant way. Implications of these results are discussed.This study was supported by the Centre for Hong Kong Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong through a Social Policy Research Programme on Policy for Prevocational Education in Hong Kong.Received Ph.D. from Massey University, New Zealand. Research interests include educational psychology, operant conditioning, behavior modification, and rehabilitation.Received Ph.D. from University of Illinois in social, industrial, and organizational psychology. Research interests included cross-cultural psychology, social justice, and the psychology of adolescence.     

Legitimacy in a Postcolonial Legal System: Public Perception of Procedural Justice and Moral Alignment Toward the Courts in Hong Kong

Legitimacy is said to be comprised of two underlying constructs: obligation to obey and moral alignment. However, legitimacy studies are mainly derived from contexts where the legal system has evolved naturally and is said to reflect the values of society. There is a paucity of research measuring public perceptions of legitimacy in postcolonial settings such as Hong Kong where the legal system was initially transplanted and many of its values may not reflect those of the local population. Procedural justice has been asserted to be a primary antecedent by which legal authorities improve their legitimacy and moral alignment. This study examines whether procedural justice is positively associated with legitimacy and moral alignment with the courts. Moreover, this study tests whether legitimacy is positively associated with cooperation with the courts. Using a random survey of the Hong Kong general population, both questions are answered in the affirmative. Implications are discussed.