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This chapter presents a comparative perspective on international education in Canada and Australia in the light of recent federal proposals for improving international education programs. The study provides an account of the multiple benefits of international education and introduces the concept of public sector entrepreneurship (PSE) as a necessity for creating and administering comprehensive programs, aimed at increasing Canada’s share of the international education market. The chapter compares Canadian and Australian international education policies with a special emphasis on the entrepreneurial approach applied in Australia. Moreover, the chapter discusses potential contributions to Canadian human capital through attractive immigration policies for international graduates. The findings reveal that Canada needs centralized management of international education programs. Following the Australian model, the establishment of a specialized agency to administer programs at federal level and to coordinate activities at provincial level is essential for success. PSE is represented by applying a market approach and revising residency and immigration strategies. Further research is required for a more detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of necessary capital investments and implications of changing the policy framework governing skilled migration.

This paper aims to propose a boundary element analysis of two-dimensional linear elasticity problems by a new expanding element interpolation method.

The expanding element is made up based on a traditional discontinuous element by adding virtual nodes along the perimeter of the element. The internal nodes of the original discontinuous element are referred to as source nodes and its shape function as raw shape function. The shape functions of the expanding element constructed on both source nodes and virtual nodes are referred as fine shape functions. Boundary variables are interpolated by the fine shape functions, while the boundary integral equations are collocated on source nodes.

The expanding element inherits the advantages of both the continuous and discontinuous elements while overcomes their disadvantages. The polynomial order of fine shape functions of the expanding elements increases by two compared with their corresponding raw shape functions, while the expanding elements still keep independence to each other as the original discontinuous elements. This feature makes the expanding elements able to naturally and accurately interpolate both continuous and discontinuous fields.

Numerical examples are presented to verify the proposed method. Results have demonstrated that the accuracy, efficiency and convergence rate of the expanding element method.

With the analysis of the causes of corruption, this study aims to investigate specific anti-corruption measures that can be implemented to reform the political system and the social climate of China.

This study examines 97 severe corruption cases of high-ranking officials in China, which occurred between 2012 and 2015. As this insinuates that both institutional and social corruption are major problems in China, the analysis delves into multiple facts of corruption, including different types, four primary underlying causes, and suggestions regarding the implementation of three significant governmental shifts that focus on investigation, prevention tactics and legal regulations.

China’s corruption is not only individual-based but also it has developed into institutional corruption and social corruption. Besides human nature and instinct, the causes of corruption can be organised into four categories, namely, social customs, social transitions, institutional designs and institutional operations. For the removed high-ranking officials, the formation of interest chains was an important underlying cause behind their corruption.

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature because this study provides a well-rounded approach to a complex issue by highlighting the significance of democracy and the rule of law as ways to regulate human behaviour to combat future corruption.

Digital libraries promote and accelerate scientific research in academic institutions. The subscribed database resources of digital libraries have become an increasingly valuable asset for researchers. Database resources help generate new ideas, determine research directions and promote productive academic interaction between teachers and students in the information age. The purpose of this study is to examine the use of electronic resources by students in various databases, the research productivity of the faculty in the science network and the number of students who graduate each year.

This study uses a quantitative method to collect secondary data from the central database of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for the population of 26 universities for 2 years (2015–2016). In addition to the HEC digital library, data was also collected from the Web of Science to determine the quality academic performance of faculty and researchers. Moreover, in the study, the total strength of teaching staff and doctoral faculty was extracted from the HEC website for investigation. The authors applied the Spearman’s correlation test to the secondary data using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 25.

The correlation results of the enrolled students and the downloaded papers from various databases were statistically insignificant (p > 0.05). However, the result showed a positive correlation (p < 0.05) between the use of selected/known databases from a number of databases accessed by the HEC. More importantly, it turns out that the faculty’s productivity in the scientific network and the number of students who graduated from public and private universities are found to be insignificant (p > 0.05). However, the authors found a positive correlation (p < 0.05) between doctoral and non-doctoral faculties, which show that a significant number of non-doctoral faculties are still actively involved in teaching and research.

Research based on academic activities by faculties and students, performed for the first time on the basis of secondary data, will help the HEC and university management to determine the right direction and develop plans to improve academic performance and research quality.

This paper aims to study the impact of external fairness of executive compensation on M&A premium, and examine the moderate role of institutional investors. The high M&A premium is the main factors that induce the huge impairment of listed companies’ goodwill and the plummeting performance. Executives are the decision-makers of M&As, and their decision-making process is inevitably affected by the psychological factors. In recent years, institutional investors have become an important external force that can affect the governance of listed companies.

The authors use M&A data of listed companies from 2008 to 2018 and use OLS regression to test the relationship between executive compensation fairness and M&A premium.

The results show that the lower the external fairness of executive compensation, the greater the M&A premium. Institutional investors can effectively reduce the impact of external compensation unfairness on M&A premiums. The mechanism tests show that executives' psychological perception of fairness induced by external unfairness reduces their motivation to work and prompts them to use high premium to seek alternative compensation incentives. Further examinations of executive characteristics and corporate characteristics show that the role of external unfairness in executive compensation in driving M&A premiums is more pronounced in companies with longer executive tenure, weaker executive reputation incentives and private property.

This paper enriches the research on the pre-factors of M&A premiums from the perspective of executives’ psychological perception of fairness, provides evidence that institutional investors play a positive governance role and provides decision-making references for companies to take corresponding measures to reduce M&A premium risks.