‘What does it mean to re-imagine a school?’ ask Montgomery et al (2015), as they discuss alternative visions of education. Analysing andragogy gives us a similarly rich opportunity to ask: what does it mean to re-imagine the world of adult learning? a discussion that arises at this juncture is whether adult education should be oriented around social reproduction or dialogue, a question that this paper seeks to address.

Aspirations towards intercultural awareness and competence pose both exciting possibilities and complex challenges for education. In order to critically reflect on the impact of one school system, this essay studies the United World Colleges (UWCs). It demonstrates that these schools present a rich case study for scholars and educators as their efforts to promote intercultural understanding and harmony on a global scale are both constructive and contestable.

Electronification has gained momentum over the years because of the increasing adoption of digital commerce and alternative payments. Currently, Asia-Pacific (APAC) accounts for more than 50% of the $3 trillion global digital commerce market and is on track to account for nearly 70% by 2022 with fast growing China market (Bansal, Bruno, Denecker, Goparaju, & Niederkorn, 2018). While APAC accounts for most of the cashless payments market, ironically, the adoption of cashless payments in Singapore is laggard with an electronic transaction growth rate of ~5% in 2016-17 (Bansal, Bruno, Denecker, Goparaju, & Niederkorn, 2018).This paper aims at analysing the benefits of, and the reasons for, the slow adoption rate in Singapore and present a way forward. Both primary and secondary sources of information were leveraged to develop an inventory of the benefits of cashless payments, implementation bottlenecks in Singapore and a way forward to increase adoption rates. To validate the findings of the literature, an online survey was addressed to economists and professionals from government, banking and capital markets, and academia. By using hypothesis testing, the study found that despite the benefits that cashless payments offer, the factors hindering the cashless payment method were actually the systemic challenges within the financial platforms and customer-centric challenges.

Political parties and political leaders have various means of winning an election – by ensuring a good economy, equal rights for all, peace at home and abroad – in short, by good governance. Or instead, political parties and leaders could choose to follow the path that we see increasingly being used – they could employ the Inclusion-Exclusion Game.

There is a good deal of literature that details, in many different ways, how to achieve success. However, there is a paucity of work that sounds the warning bell about some of the challenges that arise when the first flush of success does arrive. The following paper discusses some trials that emerge when success does make its appearance

Increasing technological innovation and shrinking borders have resulted in stringent competition and have forced companies into seeking new ways for developing a competitive advantage. Since its introduction in 1989, the internet has taken over the globe as a storm. As of April 2018, the active internet user base has increased to 4087 million while active social media users have touched 3297 million users (Statista, 2018). Gone are the days when marketing was a one-way communication feeding method feeding customers with selective information (Ahmed, 2015). Internet and social media have now become an avenue for companies to target wider consumer base, interact with them and plan their marketing mix accordingly. With increasing penetration of internet across the globe, companies have started investing in digital marketing space to communicate with customers and enhance brand visibility. While internet penetration and social media usage have been on a high, the use of social media platforms as a marketing tool is still at a nascent stage. While companies have been exploring the benefits of social media; developing social media marketing strategies, having access to right talent, understanding digital consumer space, lack of clarity on evaluating ROI on social media and limited marketing budgets have been some of the major roadblocks that SMEs tend to face. The objective of the study is to explore if and how SMEs can win over the internet, the benefits of social media marketing and the challenges they face in implementing a well-defined social media marketing strategy. Considering high digital penetration and being a country with one of the highest active user bases, the Authors have zeroed in on Singapore as a target market to evaluate the objectives of the study.

The objective of the study is to benchmark the average life expectancy rates of the elected leaders of selected countries vis-à-vis life expectancy rates of the general population of the world and highlight any inequalities. Subsequently, the research focuses on identifying area based life expectancy inequality, if any, amongst the elected leaders selected for the study. Retrospective analysis of mortality rates in elected leaders was done to construct life table. Historical life data of 231 elected leaders from 11 countries were obtained to calculate an average life expectancy and the same was compared with the average life expectancy of the general population of the world. To analyse geographic inequalities between the elected leaders of different countries, Social Index of Inequality (SII) method was adopted. To construct the SII, Global Competitiveness Index was used as benchmark to derive the least and the most deprived countries along with the calculated life expectancy. Elected leaders from eleven countries - China, India, USA, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Indonesia and Brazil - were selected for the purpose of this study. These eleven countries factor for ~50% of the world population and would be fair representation of the other countries as well.

A number of retailers across the globe have mandated the deployment of RFID across the supply chain. However, the adoption of RFID in the retail segment in India is still uncertain. This paper aims at analyzing RFID technology and developing a business case by identifying the potential benefits of, and challenges to, its implementation. An exploratory study has been conducted to identify if and how RFID can facilitate the improvement of Economic Value Added and Economic Margin of Indian firms. The nature of the study is exploratory and thus a mixed methodology has been used to identify the benefits of, and challenges to, the implementation of RFID.

The dramatic tensions that characterize a good movie plot are being adopted by the world of marketing, sports and even news and politics. In this paper, Kurian describes the idea behind Conflict as a Marketing Tool (CAMT). He says the basic movie plot treatment of “setup, conflict and resolution” used to grab audience attention is being employed in many scenarios outside of Hollywood.

The pharmaceutical industry is an attractive industry as patients and governments, regardless of the economic situation, will require medicines. Vietnam is an important pharmaceutical market as it is projected to grow to USD $6.6 billion by 2020. In the past two decades, pharmaceutical companies that develop original drugs have lost their market exclusivity as drug patents expire and its generic drug equivalents enter the market. Brand equity becomes a key factor for off-patent original drugs in keeping its market share amidst the growing competition coupled with support from the government for the more economical generic drug products to control health expenditure. Global data reported that in Vietnam, there is a preference for imported drug products. This research is focused on the effect of the country of manufacture on the brand equity of an off-patent original drug in the Vietnam. Although many researchers have done studies on the effects of country of origin, most of these have focused on fast moving consumer goods and technology. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first time that a study is conducted in Vietnam on the effects of country of manufacture on off-patent original drug products. The research provides evidence that off-patent original drugs, when manufactured in a developed country, are better perceived versus when it is manufactured in a developing country and this includes moving to domestic manufacturing in Vietnam. The research findings support the findings of Global Data on Vietnam’s preference for imported drug products and also identified that drug products manufactured in developed countries are better perceived than those coming from developing countries. Vietnam is an out-of-pocket health expenditure market and therefore companies that own off-patent original drug products must be aware of the effects on its brand equity before making decisions to move manufacturing sites to less developed countries as a way to remain competitive with generic products. This change of manufacturing site may prove counter to the objective as it can erode brand equity leading to further loss of market share to generics.

The key motivation driving this paper is to discover the factors that play a part in influencing entrepreneurial
readiness in Singapore. It was concluded from the secondary research that these factors, in general, are culture, education, family, government policies and individual attributes. In the next stage, primary research was relied on to detect how these factors play out in Singapore and to gauge the level of entrepreneurial readiness in Singapore.

There were two main objectives of the study. Firstly, through a survey, to conduct an analysis of the operating landscape of SMEs in the Philippines by understanding the ways and means for market and operation expansion was done and the challenges that SMEs faced/perceived as barriers for internationalizing their businesses.

Secondly, using this perspective, and through interviews, to develop an internationalization strategy for a company identified in this paper as SGS Inc. (the name has been changed to protect its identity) to support its goals in internationalizing its business. SGS Inc is being used in this paper as an illustrative case-study.