On December 16, TIGCR invited Associate Professor Federico de Gregorio of the University of Akron, College of Business to deliver a speech titled “When Brands Take a Stand: The Impact of Political Ideology on Consumer Response to Brands’ Explicit Social Positions.” With several cases of well-known American brands, Professor de Gregorio explored the relationship between consumers’ political ideology and the brands’ political stance.

Dr. Federico de Gregorio

Professor de Gregorio explained to the students why enterprises nowadays are willing to “take a stand” or “engage in social movements,” which is referred to as “Corporate Sociopolitical Activism (CSA)” by academics. He also stated that according to research, an enterprise might avoid the negative effects of CSA only when its values are similar to the values of its customers and investors. Although the amount of academic research on CSA is still limited, it is increasing day by day.

Group Photo

Visit https://youtu.be/hX19jSucjrI for Dr. de Gregorio's speech.

Dr. Kuo-Chih Hung

Workshop Group Photo

Visit https://youtu.be/_6wU_fYgOqk (in Mandarin) for the clip relevant to the workshop.

TIGCR and National Chengchi University’s Department of Public Administration Taiwanese Government Bureaucrats Survey and Research Team held the workshop “Bureaucrats and Government Efficiency: Analysis from the Seventh Taiwan Government Bureaucrats Survey (TGBS VII) Data Archives” on November 5, 2021, for the Taiwan Association for Schools of Public Administration and Affairs (TASPAA) Conference held at the Central Police University. This event could be attended either physically or virtually, and was simultaneously live-streamed in the Facebook group “Maokong Forum.”

Professor Li-Yin Liu

U.S. scholar, Assistant Professor Li-Yin Liu of the University of Dayton, was invited to the workshop and gave a speech via conference call. The topic of the speech was “Cultural theory in the study of public administration: an overview and its potential in Taiwan.” Its content focused on the cultural theory and its application in public administration studies, in the hopes of exploring brand-new insights inspired by the interaction and combination of the cultural theory and TGBS.
Through this workshop, the participating scholars exchanged their research results. Through mutual feedback, the scholars explored issues related to the careers of civil servants, hoping that the results of their research can motivate the refinement of the civil service system, not only enhancing the functions of the system, but also improving the personal well-being and career paths of civil servants.

Dr. Hsiang-Kai Dong

The University of Canterbury, New Zealand, the Research Initiative on Taiwan Studies (RITS), the Southeast Asia Research Initiative (SEARI), and the TIGCR jointly held the 2021 International Symposium on Democratic Governance and Democratic Recession in the Indo-Pacific Region on December 9-10, 2021, at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The two-day symposium included two keynote speeches and five panels. To implement epidemic prevention measures, the symposium took place both online and at the University of Canterbury. TIGCR members talked on the panel “The Impact of COVID-19” and presented three English papers in total via conference call. During this symposium, scholars from New Zealand, Australia, England, Turkey, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan gathered to exchange insights on various studies regarding the democratic governance and recession of the Indo-Pacific region.

2021 International Symposium on Democratic Governance and Democratic Recession in the Indo-Pacific Region

Panel 5： "The Impact of COVID-19"  Q&A session