Audit for Whom? Time to Review Roles of Independent Auditors in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong government has been reforming its laws regarding accounting practices in recent years, to pre-empt problems similar to that of Enron. It correctly recognizes an opportunity to enhance and distinguish the financial system in Hong Kong and create a competitive advantage for Hong Kong. The sixty-five billion dollar question is: what is the right approach for accounting practice reform? One obvious approach is to model reform after the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX). The SOX increases personal liabilities of senior management and introduces extremely cumbersome compliance processes (s 3 (b)(ix) of Minutes of Bills Committee of Financial Reporting Council Bill. (19 July 2005)). While this approach may be the right move for the United States, because rescuing investor confidence is paramount, a similar approach may not be optimal for Hong Kong. Hong Kong relies, to a great degree, on foreign investments and a heavy-handed approach may scare investments away (Charles E. Schumer &; Michael R. Bloomberg To Save New York, Learn from London, Wall Street Journal 1 Nov 2006). This paper, argues that failure of independent auditors was mainly caused by bad incentives. In particular, auditors were hired by and responsible to the management of companies. Thus, there is no surprise that auditors were less diligent in finding problems caused by management. Furthermore, proposing of an alternate to the SOA’s approach. Specifically, a new legal approach should be enforced that allows shareholders to sue auditors when failure to uncover accounting issues causes loss of shareholders’ values.     

Privatised Keynesianism: An Unacknowledged Policy Regime

There have now been two successive policy regimes since the Second World War that have temporarily succeeded in reconciling the uncertainties and instabilities of a capitalist economy with democracy's need for stability for people's lives and capitalism's own need for confident mass consumers. The first of these was the system of public demand management generally known as Keynesianism. The second was not, as has often been thought, a neo-liberal turn to pure markets, but a system of markets alongside extensive housing and other debt among low- and medium-income people linked to unregulated derivatives markets. It was a form of privatised Keynesianism. This combination reconciled capitalism's problem, but in a way that eventually proved unsustainable. After its collapse there is debate over what will succeed it. Most likely is an attempt to re-create it on a basis of corporate social responsibility.     

《劳动合同法》实施后的变化与对策

《劳动合同法》颁布实施之后,企业内部发生了很多变化,劳动者权益有了法律保证。但是,企业侵犯劳动者权益的现象在一定范围内依然存在。工会应当加强源头参与,加强对职工队伍的教育培训,同时还应加强工会自身建设,更好地维护职工合法权益。     

中国养老保险统筹层次的改革路径与发展方向探讨

从国外经验出发,养老保险立法先行、确立时间表,通过合适的基金运作模式,各级政府的财政责任分担机制,养老保险的垂直管理和基金预算管理制度,以及历史债务和做实个人账户机制,用"三步走"的方式,先实现省级统筹,然后建立全国统一预算,分省余缺调剂的方式,逐步过渡到全国统收统支的模式,这是适合目前中国现状和社会保障未来战略发展的选择。     

Unlocking from Community Stakeholders,Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects for effective Company–Community relationship

Abstract

Conflicts in mining fields that revolve around the type and perceived impact of CSR projects seem to be daunting to solve. Such conflicts emerge from misconceptions among community stakeholders’ that lead to a failed company–community relationship. This inimical situation threatens peace, security, lives, and properties at the community level. To resolve the company–community conflicts, it is important to minimize the misconception among community stakeholders’ by identifying their preferences of CSR projects. However, the challenge of identifying these projects in mining fields is yet to be fully explored and understood. The aim of this paper is to identify community stakeholders’ topmost preferences of CSR projects for an effective company–community relationship and propose a path for community engagement. A sample of 604 respondents comprising community leaders’ and local residents’ from three regions which host Gold Mining Firms with level ‘A’ membership from the Ghana Chamber of Mines were drawn for this study. Using a questionnaire made up of close and open ended questions, a survey was conducted. With SPSS 16.0, the data on the close ended questions were analyzed with ranking and factor analyses while the open ended were drawn into teams to support the former. The results of the ranking analysis show that different group of stakeholders’ had a different preference for CSR projects. The factor analysis revealed that for effective company–community relationship both stakeholders’ preferred a Streamline Social Intervention and Improve Stakeholder Economic related CSR projects. Base on these findings, the study recommends that Mining firms’ should give maximum consideration to projects that seek the welfare of both stakeholders’ and have equal engagement with all stakeholders’. Also, managing expectations before, during and after mining should be a shared responsibility of all the stakeholders’.     

Clarity of responsibility and foreign policy performance voting

Do voters’ assessments of the government's foreign policy performance influence their vote intentions? Does the ‘clarity of responsibility’ in government moderate this relationship? Existing research on the United States demonstrates that the electorate's foreign policy evaluations influence voting behaviour. Whether a similar relationship exists across the advanced democracies in Europe remains understudied, as does the role of domestic political institutions that might generate responsibility diffusion and dampen the effect of foreign policy evaluations on vote choice. Using the attitudinal measures of performance from the 2011 Transatlantic Trends survey collected across 13 European countries, these questions are answered in this study through testing on incumbent vote the diffusion‐inducing effects of five key domestic factors frequently used in the foreign policy analysis literature. Multilevel regression analyses conclude that the electorate's ability to assign punishment decreases at higher levels of responsibility diffusion, allowing policy makers to circumvent the electoral costs of unpopular foreign policy. Specifically, coalition governments, semi‐presidential systems, ideological dispersion among the governing parties and the diverse allocation of the prime ministerial and foreign policy portfolios generate diffusion, dampening the negative effects of foreign policy disapproval on vote choice. This article contributes not only to the debate on the role of foreign policy in electoral politics, but also illustrates the consequential effects of domestic institutions on this relationship.     

民国时期集体劳动合同立法述论 —— 以 1930 年《团体协约法》为中心

民国时期,通常将个别劳动合同称为劳动契约,而将集体劳动合同称为团体协约。中国劳工立 法较迟,团体协约立法则更晚。国民政府有关团体协约的立法最早可以追溯至 1929 年《劳动法典草案》的编纂, 其后在《工会法》起草过程中也有团体契约权的规定。延至 1930 年,国民政府正式颁行《团体协约法》,这是 中国历史上第一部有关集体劳动合同的专门法律。《团体协约法》的出台因应了当时中国工业化过程中劳资冲 突的实际需求,但也不可避免地存在历史局限。     

Choosing to be political: some reflections on youth activism in the US

This article explores youth activism in the US, not through the lens of collective action, but as the product of personal choices. By drawing on existentialism, and particularly on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, this article proposes to shift the focus of the debate from youths’ collective action to the self – a conscious self that observes, perceives and makes sense of the surrounding world through personal experience. It is this conscious self that decides how, and whether, to intervene against the ‘wrong’ that the self experiences. In this perspective, it is not only the acts (of citizenship) that matter, but the conscious process through which the self chooses to become political. Such an understanding will ultimately help uncover not only how the undocumented act and how to conceptualise their acts but also how they perceive and experience their current status and who they want to become.     

Multinationals as global institution: Power,authority and relative autonomy

This article aims to inform the long‐standing and unresolved debate between voluntary corporate social responsibility and initiatives to impose binding legal obligations on multinational enterprises. The two approaches share a common feature: neither can fully specify its own scope conditions, that is, how much of the people and planet agenda either can expect to deliver. The reason they share this feature is also the same: neither is based on a foundational political analysis of the multinational enterprise in the context of global governance. Such an analysis is essential for providing background to and perspective on what either approach can hope to achieve, and how. This article begins to bridge the gap by illustrating aspects of the political power, authority, and relative autonomy of the contemporary multinational enterprise. The conclusion spells out some implications for the debate itself, and for further research.     

美日安全合作:从地区走向全球

美日同盟是美国维持亚太秩序的重要基石,也是日本外交政策的基轴,随着中国的崛起,美日双方已然意识到原有的同盟框架难以应对来自中国的挑战。为此,美日通过制订新的《美日防卫合作指针》,强化美日同盟,加强双方在全球范围内的安全合作。然而,美日安全合作同时也面临着质疑与否定,在美日两国内,长期以来一直存在着对美日同盟的争论。未来美日安全合作将如何发展,不仅取决于日本的安全感知,更取决于美国在国内国际新形势下将会采取的战略。由于美国新任总统特朗普一以贯之的对日负面认知,使得日本政府和国民对于特朗普的对日政策不抱期待。然而,特朗普上台后并不会撤走驻日美军,更不会让美日同盟解体,同时,商人出身的特朗普并不反对自由贸易,其反对的是无法贯彻其意志的自由贸易。因此,在特朗普总统任期中,其特有的个性和自信,将会使未来美国的对日政策打上"特式"烙印,这为美日关系的发展增加了许多不确定因素,美日同盟可能面临新的危机。