Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Every nation in Asia has dealt with COVID-19 differently and with varying levels of success in the absence of clear and effective leadership from the WHO. As a result, the WHO’s role in Asia as a global health organization is coming under increasing pressure. As its credibility is slowly being eroded by public displays of incompetence and negligence, it has also become an arena of contestation. Moreover, while the pandemic continues to undermine the future of global health governance as a whole, the highly interdependent economies in Asia have exposed the speed with which pandemics can spread, as intensive regional travel and business connections have caused every area in the region to be hit hard. The migrant labor necessary to sustain globalized economies has been strained and the security of international workers is now more precarious than ever, as millions have been left stranded, seen their entry blocked, or have limited access to health services. This volume provides an accessible framework for the understanding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia, with a specific emphasis on global governance in health and labor.

What Keeps a Vibrant Population Together?

Managing diversity is a challenging problem for organizations and governments. Diversity in a population may be of two kinds—acquired and innate. The former refers to diversity acquired by pre-existing social or organizational environments, attracting employees or immigrants because of their wealth and opportunities. Innate diversity, on the other hand, refers to a collection of pre-existing communities having to interact with one another and to build an overarching social or organizational identity. While acquired diversity has a prior element of common identity, innate diversity needs to build a common identity from a number of disparate regional or local identities. Diversity in any large population may have different extents of acquired and innate elements. In this paper, innate and acquired diversity are modeled in terms of two factors, namely: insularity and homophily, respectively. Insularity is the tendency of agents to act cooperatively only with others from the same community, which is often the primary challenge of innate diversity; while homophily is the tendency of agents to prefer members from their own community to start new social or business connections, which is often the primary challenge in acquired diversity. The emergence of network structure is studied when insularity and homophily are varied. In order to promote cooperation in a diverse population, the role played by a subset of agents called “global” agents who are not affected by homophily and insularity considerations is also studied. Simulation results show several interesting emergent properties. While the global agents are shown to acquire high betweenness, they are by no means the wealthiest or the most powerful in the network. However, the presence of global agents is important for the regional agents whose own wealth prospects increase because of their interaction with global agents.

Trust levels within categories of information and communication technology companies

The arguable claims of levels of trust in politics and business situations motivated this study, which investigates the degree of trust within micro, small, and medium categories of Hungarian Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies. Different sizes of companies have varying interactions between internal members and their business partners. This study concentrated on exploring Hungarian ICT companies due to their significant role in supporting Industry 4.0. The study population are active Hungarian ICT companies. This research implemented random cluster selection related to the location of ICT firms. It exploited 100 samples, including micro, small, and medium-sized companies, and implemented discriminant analysis to examine the description and hypotheses. First, this study found that the level of trust in institutions within micro, small, and medium-sized companies varies significantly. The level of trust in institutions proliferates within corporations due to the capability of the formal institution to provide fair public services. This research additionally underlined that the performance of the Hungarian government would improve trust amongst the companies. Second, this study concluded that the level of interpersonal trust within three categories of companies was similar. A high level of interpersonal trust would expand internal engagement among the members of companies. Finally, the level of trust in business partners varied significantly within the distinct sizes of Hungarian ICT companies. A high level of trust in corporate associates improves business collaboration, reduces uncertainty, and supports long-term business connections. Levels of institutional trust and inter-organizational trust differed amongst different categories of companies. However, the level of interpersonal trust remained similar within companies of the various sizes.

Impact of Environmental Regulation Intensity on Green Technology Innovation: From the Perspective of Political and Business Connections

With heavy air pollution and the highest CO2 emissions in the world, China is in urgent need of technology innovation to improve the energy efficiency and control the pollution emission. This study empirically investigates the impact of environmental regulation intensity, political connections, and business connections on green technology innovation in China’s firms. The authors employ a panel data regression analysis on a dataset that comprises 884 observations for A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2019, owing to the availability of data. The results show: (1) Environmental regulation intensity (ERI) has a U-shaped effect on green technology innovation (GTI), which means GTI is inhibited by ERI in the early stage but gets promoted in the long run; (2) Political connections positively moderate the relationship between ERI and GTI mainly because of crowding-out effect and resource effect; (3) Business connections have a negative impact on the relationship between ERI and GTI, resulting from knowledge acquisition and lock-in; (4) Business connections have a greater moderating effect than political connections probably because political ties lack an effective mechanism to ensure long-term cooperation with the enterprises; (5) However, with regard to those firms in the non-heavily polluting industry, both connections moderate the relationship between ERI and GTI in an opposite direction to the main effect. The research results help policy makers formulate relevant policies, based on the impact of environmental regulation and social connections on green technology innovation.

"Pious Jew" Yakov Frizer and the Status of Jews in Siberia in the Early 20th Century

The present article analyses some documents concerning the legal and social status of Yakov D. Frizer (1869-1932), who was a Jew, a resident of Irkutsk, a merchant of the First Guild and one of the biggest gold miners of East Siberia. The story of his life in East Siberia describes religious tolerance along with manifestations of nationalism and antisemitism. On the threshold of the 20th century, Siberia was a colorful mosaic of numerous religious groups and confessions existing in the Russian Empire. Jewish communities of Siberia were characterized by openness and heterogeneity. In contras-distinction to the Jews from the Pale of Settlement, Jews of Siberia were successfully integrated into Siberian society. Being a son of a criminal exile, Yakov Frizer in a course of time became one of the biggest Siberian entrepreneurs. Diaries from Frizers private archive sometimes pointed out to the cases of religious and ethnic disaffection, thereby demonstrating the complexity and versatility of interfaith relations in East Siberia. Using the definition of Pierre Bourdieu, several generations of Siberian Jews succeeded to build a symbolic capital that became a part of their social status, ensured their social respect, and business connections built on mutual trust, making Jews as useful society members. East Siberia in general was tolerant to questions of religious faith. The so-called Jewish question in East Siberia did not have the same sharpness as it had in Western provinces of the Russian Empire. The Jewish question in Siberia was rather an echo of anti-Semitic stereotypes that traditionally have deep roots in the Russian society, and common people consciousness. The article is based on unpublished sources and diaries from Frizers private archive, as well as on archival sources from the Russian State Historical Archive and the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

THE SOCIAL NETWORKS OF INVESTMENT IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

The launch of the East India Company in 1599 relied on the engagement of an investing public. Despite this, little is known about how and why ordinary individual investors chose to invest in the corporation or what institutional frameworks supported them. While the later ‘financial revolution’ would radically alter the relationship between the state, investors, and financial organizations, this process does not adequately explain the earlier development of an investing public. Using a newly developed dataset of members’ familial, neighbourhood, civic, and business connections, this article reconstructs the social networks of East India Company investors in 1599. This analysis reveals that the company was formulated within an intensely interconnected investment environment – linkages that were used to distribute information and provide access to seemingly illiquid markets. Social networks played a key role in how people decided about where, when, with whom, and how much to invest during the expansion of investment opportunities in early modern England.

Alumni Info-Com Management with Distinct Classification of Data

The Alumni Info-Com Management System is able to manage alumni data of a college and provide easy access to the same. Alumni of college stay in touch with their immediate friends and it is hard to stay connected with college mates. Contact between alumni develops business connections and to gain insight in a new field. Current students will be initially given a student login id. Access to the system can help them to seek help in their projects or for placements. This single system can satisfy almost every requirement of the alumni. Usually, alumni associations are organized in colleges, but may also be organized in a place where the alumni can meet each other. Despite the fact that there are many existing systems in colleges to maintain the alumni information, they are manual and more time consuming to current students to reach out their alumni and maintaining the privacy of the alumni. To overcome these issues, we proposed a web application which allows alumni to update their information and students can connect with them and can view the filtered events posted by alumni and admin through support vector machine algorithm.

Priests Petitioning the Police (P.Brit.Mus. EA 10650)

SummaryThe article contains the edition and discussion of a rarely encountered form of petition (ꜥn-smy) from the Ptolemaic Fayum, which today is kept by the British Museum in London. The text was submitted by a lesonis of Soknebtunis to the chief of police in Mouchis. The document concerns a dispute between two priests from two different localities, Kerkeneith and Tebtunis, over agricultural lands and a harvest. The text is not only an addition to the small corpus of such petitions but also informs about juridical, economic, and religious life in the Fayum under the Ptolemies. It furthermore sheds light on business connections among members of various crocodile priesthoods in the Fayum.

IMMIGRANTS’ USE OF LANGUAGE FOR PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES IN A HOST COUNTRY: IMPLICATIONS FOR ADULT EDUCATION

By 2050 the flow of climate immigrants is repeatedly predicted to be about 200 million. Immigrants’ employment in a host country has become a hot issue. To empower immigrants’ employability, structural features, e.g. adult education, can assist with providing a proper training to immigrants. The aim of the present paper is to carry out an empirical study on immigrants’ use of language for professional purposes in a host country underpinning elaboration of implications for adult education. The empirical study was carried out at Klaipeda University, Klaipeda, Lithuania, on the 24th October 2019. Focus interview served as the basis for data collection. Theoretical analysis results in the establishment of inter-connections between immigrants’ use of mother tongue, foreign language as well as host country’s language at work in a host country. The conclusion is drawn that the majority of immigrants uses their mother tongues at work in a host country. The empirical study reveals that local companies employ immigrants for establishing business connections between the immigrants’ host country as well as immigrants’ origin country. The paper’s novel contribution is the newly formulated implications on immigrants’ use of language for professional purposes for adult education. Directions of future work are proposed.