http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/725 Wed, 01 May 2013 03:06:36 GMT 2013-05-01T03:06:36Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6526 Title: An exploration of the social service role strain, social service role stress and empowerment of frontline police officers in China Authors: Wang, Xiaohai ( 王小海) Abstract: This study examines the possible relationships between police social service role strain (PSSRS), police social service role stress (PSSRSS), police social service structural empowerment (PSSSE) and police social service psychological empowerment (PSSPE) among frontline police officers in China. Based on theories of role strain, structural empowerment and psychological empowerment, a conceptual model of Police Social Service Role Stress-Strain and Coping is established. This study adopts a two-phase (quantitative and qualitative approaches) sequential explanatory design. In the first phase, a questionnaire is used to collect data from a sample of two hundred frontline community patrol officers in Shenzhen Public Security Bureau (China). After conducting the quantitative analysis, the author uses in-depth interviews to explore the nature of PSSRS, PSSRSS, PSSSE and PSSPE from 12 selected interviewees’ insights. According to the results of the survey and in-depth interviews, the participants report a comparatively high level of PSSRS and PSSRSS, and seem to perceive a low level of PSSSE and have a weak sense of PSSPE. It has been found that there are significantly positive correlations between PSSRSS and PSSRS and negative relationships between PSSSE, PSSPE and PSSRS. The emergence of PSSRSS, PSSSE, PSSPE, PSSRS and their correlations needs to be understood as dependent upon the development of Chinese policing and the Chinese police organization. In reviewing the development of Chinese policing in the pre-reform period, the dual social control (informal and formal) mechanism with emphasis on informal social control followed the mass line of policing and operated very well for social service delivery in China. During the reform era, Chinese policing is characterized by strike-hard campaigns, police professionalization, and police professional ethics which are highly concerned with the emergence of PSSRS and PSSRSS. Many limits of paramilitary-bureaucratic structure in Chinese police organization are closely concerned with respondents’ perception of a low level of PSSSE and PSSPE. The author proposes a model for understanding and coping with PSSRS among frontline police officers. Many suggestions are made for inhibiting the emergence of PSSRSS and improving the empowerment in the police organization. Notes: CityU Call Number: HV8260.A2 W37 2010; xii, 373 p. : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2010.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-347) Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6526 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6151 Title: Managing institutions : survival of minban secondary schools in mainland China Authors: Wang, Ying (王穎) Abstract: Minban education has already established its position in China's education system. Diversification, uneven development across regions, market-oriented, coexistence and confusion of multiple ownerships are its major features. However, there is still limited systematic study on its operation. The emergence of minban schools represents the parents and students' need for alternative education. The external demands from these stakeholders, as well as from the government, constitute the institutional environment impelling the survival and development of minban schools. At the same time, the individual schools themselves are also responding to and shaping the institutional environment. This study adopts the ideas of new institutionalism to analyze minban schools as a form of organization, and its interaction with the institutions. The study of institutions includes the regulative, normative and cognitive dimensions. This study aims to explore the new features of the evolving educational institutional environment and the strategies that minban schools adopt to manage the institutions in this environment. Qualitative research methodology - multiple case study - was adopted. As observed in the new educational institutional environment, there are four types of minban schools: the converted minban school, the affiliated minban school, the private capital invested minban school and the international minban school. A total of eight minban secondary schools in Taiyuan and Shenzhen were chosen to represent these diverse types of minban schools. Data collection methods such as archival review, field participant observation and in-depth interview, were adopted to collect data. The study showed that the reemergence of market and its principles, the decentralization of government and segmentation of its power and authority, the bureaucratic profession coupled with the consumerist profession of teachers, and the investment-oriented and 'education-as-consumption' culture engendered an increasingly multiple institutional environment for minban schools. Different types of minban schools co-existed, with each type of school occupying their own unique location in the continuum from 'domesticated' and 'public', to 'wild' and 'private'. Differential locations reflected the 'differential order' of different types of minban schools in this institutional environment. The converted minban school, the affiliated minban school, the private capital invested minban school, and the international minban school were located, in order, according to their distance from the government and public system. Such hierarchical arrangement of minban schools took shape according to the bureaucratic arrangement of the government's regulative institution. Concurrently, the normative and cognitive institutions also contributed to shape the boundary of order: maintaining and/or changing the boundary and arrangement of differential order. The study argued that the institutions influence the differential order of minban schools and through this, delimit the strategies that each school, as an organization within the institutional environment, selected to cope with the institutions. These strategies could be categorized as 'capitalize', 'advocacy', 'avoidance', and 'isolation'. During the process of interaction between organizations and institutions, the boundaries of differential order changed, and at the same time the components of institutions are interpreted and re-interpreted, which in turn adjusted the room for organization's autonomy. Minban schools have greater freedom from regulatory control, and within, different types of schools will have different extent of freedom enjoyed. according to their differential order. However, they all actively derived strategies to manage institutions in order to expand their autonomy. In this process, resources, protection and support (gained from trust), received from the local governments and parents, were mobilized for their own pursuits. This study confirmed that, alongside the increasing number of minban schools, the demands from these new types of organizations and the parents' increasing engagement in education, were meaningful in cultivating a primitive form of civil society. However, the function of minban schools proposed by the government seemed more of a myth than reality. They could not lead to a substantial improvement of the educational system. The government still maintained substantial control on minban schools through the power vested upon them by the bureaucratic structure, and re-penetrated into the new institutional environment via new forms of regulation and governance. Notes: CityU Call Number: LC54.C6 W36 2010; xii, 409 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2010.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 382-405) Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6151 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5479 Title: Status of law and corruption control in post-reform China Authors: Jiang, Guoping (江國平) Abstract: Corruption has been persistent in human history for thousands of years. From the Alpis to the Yangtze River, from biblical time to post-modern era, it features our societies all the time. Since the early days of Chinese Confucian civilization, corruption has been puzzling China. When Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) came to power, he stressed more on economic development and less on ideological struggle. Therefore a new policy of “Open and Reform” was implemented in 1978 targeting a market economy system. The policy was successful regarding to the economic development. People in China enjoyed a better life. However, the new policy not only brought a booming economy to China, but also negative side-effects, such as corruption and crimes. It is so rampant that “in the post-Mao era, political corruption has become one of the central concerns, even an obsession, for the citizens of the People’s Republic of China” (Hsu, 2001:27). Although corruption is a universal phenomenon, there is no well accepted definition for it. The existing definitions (moral perspective, legal perspective, P-A-C perspective, rent-seeking perspective, and public culture perspective) reflect particular aspects of corruption, and provide insights for corruption research. However, these approaches share one assumption that individuals do something wrong according to ruling group’ standards or the dominant values. A commonly missed point in their analyses is that the ruling group’s standards or interests considerations are never challenged. It might be overstated to refer it to “false consciousness”, but it is inappropriate not questioning ruling group’s ideology and entrenched interests at all. “Given the impossibility of using the social categories of crime and deviance as scientific categories or observational terms with definable, constant and consistent behavioral referents, it makes most sense to treat them as elements of highly contextualized moral and political discourses, i.e. negative ideological categories with specific, historical applications” (Sumner 1990:26). Based on that, rather than analyzing corruption following ruling group’s logic, Lo (1993) examines corruption in societal (social, political and economic) structures and historical background with the ruling group’s interests and political economy such as power, class, ideology, conflict, institution and culture taken into account. His finding shows that it is unconvincing if not to challenge the class bias in corruption research, and it is more appropriate to treat corruption as “a form of social censure” which is a negative category of moral ideology created and enforced by the ruling group in societies (Lo 1993:3). Such a macro perspective helps to avoid class biases because it goes beyond it by rejecting ruling group’s normative assumption or behavioral prerequisite about corruption and therefore exposes the essence or nature of corruption which is overlooked in the former definitions. If corruption were a special form of social censure, it would serve the ruling group in nature. The ruling group’s ultimate goal is to maintain hegemony. All other goals or considerations are subject to it or serve it, including anticorruption. Therefore the ruling group or political elites will take many other issues into account in the process of anticorruption, such as establishing legitimacy, gaining public support, winning power struggle, and personnel arrangement, for the reason of hegemony. In addition, the ruling group is not always a coherent group. There are fragmentations and sub-groups within it, and the dominant faction always controls the social censure. The dominant faction exists at various levels such as central government, provincial government, municipal government, and county government. On the one hand, they want to maintain the whole ruling group’ hegemony; on the other hand, they have their own entrenched interests to consider. For example, in most cases, the censure on corruption is “instruments with which party leaders pursue ideological and political struggles” (Lo 1993:155). With the ultimate goal of hegemony and various aims or considerations in consideration, the censure on corruption is hard to be consistent across the nation. In this sense, anticorruption is just application of social censure, and cannot be successful. However, there are many clean governments around the world including Ice Island, Finland, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Why are they clean given the “bad” nature of corruption? Our preliminary research suggests that status of law might play an important role in the censure on corruption. The censure on corruption would be different if law is highly respected (namely rule of law) or highly disrespected (rule by law or rule of man). The rule of law basically means a complete and well publicized legislation, independent judicial system and fair law enforcement. Without rule of law, the censure on corruption in mainland China is conditioned by too many political considerations and personal interference, and therefore faces difficulties. To test the above theoretical propositions, the author conducted both quantitative and qualitative research in Mainland China. More than 1100 questionnaires were collected from three universities which are located in the north, middle and south China. Eighteen in-depth interviews were done with imprisoned corrupt officials and officials in power. Both quantitative and qualitative data tend to suggest that the theoretical imagination that corruption in essence is a form of social censure which serves the ruling group or political elites in society. In post-reform China, they targeted specific behaviors or groups, and created a form of social censure for their interests or ideology. To maximum the interests and maintain hegemony to the largest extent, they also manipulated the judicial process and distorted the justice. The rule of law could constrain the manipulation on the social censure, but data suggest that the post-reform China is only rule by law state wherein the law is instrumental to the ruling group, governments and political elites. The rule by law allows arbitrariness in the creation and application of social censure by the ruling group or political elites. The nature of pro-ruling class as a political tool is explained and illustrated in full in post-reform China with many documentary cases and interview cases. Given this, bizarre anticorruption outcomes and rampancy of corruption are unavoidable in post-reform mainland China. Notes: CityU Call Number: KNQ4516 .J53 2008; viii, 435 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2008.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 407-425) Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5479 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5417 Title: Maternal and paternal contributions to Chinese children's emotion regulation and externalizing behavior Authors: Xu, Yan (徐岩) Abstract: Emotion regulation and parental behaviors are the most important factors linked with externalizing behavior in childhood. This study investigated the relationships among parental warmth, parents’ reaction to children’s negative emotions, children’s emotion regulation, and children’s externalizing behavior, with a central focus of exploring both mother’s and father’s contribution simultaneously in Chinese context. Parents were recruited from kindergarten and primary school located in Guangzhou and Shenzhen city in China. Total 193 couples with kindergarten child- (child’s mean age = 64.53 months; SD = 6.39 months) and 215 couples with primary school child (child’s mean age = 89.43 months; SD = 8.73 months) were included in the study. They completed a questionnaire independently. The child’s teacher also completed measures of the child’s emotion regulation and externalizing behaviors in school. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling. We conducted cross-sectional analysis to test the difference between two children age groups. Results showed that the kindergarten pattern of the relations among parenting variables, children’s emotion regulation and externalizing behavior differed with primary school pattern. For kindergarten children, maternal warmth, paternal warmth, and father’s punitive reactions had significant influences on children’s emotion regulation. For primary school children, only maternal warmth was significant predictor of children’s emotion regulation. Children’s emotion regulation had a significant mediating effect on the relation between maternal warmth and children’s externalizing behavior in two age groups. Results indicated that parents had different contributions to children’s emotion regulation and behavior; and parenting practices, depending on the child's age. The findings on Chinese parents’ reactions towards children’s negative emotion further clarified the difference between Chinese and Western Parenting practices to negative emotions. Moreover, our findings indicated that fathers have a more crucial role to play than mothers do in the emotional socialization of young Chinese children. At last, several practical implications were discussed in this study. Keywords: parenting, warmth, emotion regulation, externalizing behavior Notes: CityU Call Number: HQ755.85 .X83 2008; vii, 105 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2008.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-105) Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5417 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z