Managing the Public Sector in Hong Kong: Trends and Adjustments

Public sector management in Hong Kong was initially designed to rule the territory as a British colony. A number of changes took place in the last quarter century before Hong Kong's reintegration with China and the nature of public sector management has transformed over this period. An overview of administrative principles and practices and an analysis of changes reveal trends that were influenced by both local and international factors. The framework of traditional public administration in the territory adapted effectively to embrace the principles of new public management without much difficulty. The global economic crisis compelled the government to revise its strategies to expand public spending and adopt a further reduced role in the provision of public services. New social, economic and political challenges are driving Hong Kong to adjust to the changing circumstances and trends, and four noticeable shifts can be identified. They include shifts from an administrative to a political executive, from job cuts to job creation, from financial restraint to increased spending, and from public to private sector provision of public services. The trends are driven by local and international forces as well as the progress of democratization and political awareness in Hong Kong.     

Asymmetric Federalism and the Question of Democratic Justice in Northeast India

This article intends to fill a glaring void in the existing academic literature on the issues and challenges which stem not only from crafting, but also making asymmetric federalism work in northeast India. It examines the extent and limits to which asymmetric federalism—specifically under Article 371A of India’s Constitution—not only negotiates Nagas’ sovereignty claims over their land and resources and caters to the demands of democratic justice, but also the extent to which it consolidates India’s state-nation and democracy building in its northeastern periphery. Contending that the extant asymmetric federal arrangement in India’s polity stems from a centralist federal framework, the article makes a case for a more robust asymmetric federalism, which goes beyond this framework.     

The forensic DNA implications of genetic differentiation between endogamous communities

In many indigenous minority populations, and among migrants from Asian and African populations now resident in western Europe, North America and Australia, there is a strong tradition of endogamy and a preference for consanguineous unions. These marriage practices can result in F(ST) values greatly in excess of the maximum value (0.01) currently recommended for forensic DNA purposes under guidelines established by the National Research Council (NRC) of the USA. To examine the possible extent of deviation from this accepted norm, three co-resident Pakistani communities were studied using 10 autosomal dinucleotide markers and six tetranucleotide markers on the Y-chromosome. The mean population subdivision coefficient (FST) value was 0.13 for the autosomal loci, and Y-chromosome loci exhibited even stronger differentiation with unique alleles identified in all three communities. The data indicate that even when sub-populations are virtually indistinguishable in terms of anthropology, geography, ethnicity or culture, they may still exhibit major genetic differentiation. Where significant population stratification is known to exist, more detailed genetic databases should be developed for forensic DNA purposes, based on reference data from each of the appropriate sub-populations and not on random or combined samples.     

IoT‐enabled services in online food retailing

The present study aims at understanding the application of Internet of Things (IoT) in online food retailing, influencing purchase frequency of ready‐to‐eat food products. The research is empirical in nature in which an internet based consumer survey was conducted to collect 329 valid responses on PAN India basis. This research comprehensively investigated, shortlisted, and finally selected the factors of consumer involvement and decision making using IoT in online food retailing. The binary logistic regression model revealed that the factors relative advantage, best deals, availability and information, consumer satisfaction, and channel efficiency significantly influences the consumer purchase frequency for ready‐to‐eat food products at various stages in online food retailing. The understanding, extrapolation, and proper management of these factors will help online food retail players in implementing IoT enable services effectively in their retail formats to gain consumer confidence.     

The Organisation of Hate

In this paper, it is argued that we need to understand the role of ‘hate’ in the organisation of bodies and spaces before we ask the question of the limits of ‘hate crime’ as a legal category. Rather than assuming hate is a psychological disposition - that it comes from within a psyche and then moves out to others - the paper suggests that hate works to align individual and collective bodies through the very intensity of its attachments. Such alignments are unstable precisely given the fact that hate does not reside in a subject, object or body; the instability of hate is what makes it so powerful in generating the effects that it does. Furthermore, although hate does not reside positively in a subject, body or sign, this does not mean that hate does have effects that are structural and mediated. This paper shows that hate becomes attached or ‘stuck’ to particular bodies, often through violence, force and harm. The paper dramatizes its arguments by a reflection on racism as hate crime, looking at the circulation of figures of hate in discourses of nationhood, from both extreme right wing and mainstream political parties. It also considers the part of what hate is doing can precisely be understood in terms of the affect it has on the bodies of those designated as the hated, an affective life that is crucial to the injustice of hate crime. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Engendering organisational practice in NGOs: The case of Utthan

In the late 1970s, feminist social scientists began to challenge some of the assumptions underlying the dominant paradigms on organisations, arguing that they reflect and are structured by the values articulated within the larger institutional arenas in which they are embedded, thus reproducing gender-discriminatory outcomes. This paper unpacks the 'deep structure' of one NGO, Utthan, based in Gujarat, India, to understand the extent to which it is an engendering organisation. It suggests that, while gender-sensitive leadership, training, and resources play a critical role in addressing gender equity in development practice, organisational transformation is a much harder and longer process requiring sustained commitment from the leadership, staff, and funding partners.