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Singapore is well known internationally for its uncompromising stance towards law and order and its use of the death penalty in particular for murder and drug trafficking. Until 2012, it was one of the few countries in the world where the death penalty was mandatory for persons convicted of these two crimes. The law was amended in 2012 to give a judge the choice to impose the death penalty or life imprisonment (with caning) for non-intentional murder and drug trafficking in some situations. What do Singaporeans think of the use of the death penalty in their own country? This article reports on some findings of a survey conducted in 2016 on 1500 Singaporeans to assess their knowledge and support of the death penalty.

Anyone concerned about how to enhance the effectiveness of a knowledgebased economy would certainly be attracted to a paper with an eye-catching title like "Is meritocracy outmoded in a knowledge-based economy?". After all, there is a consensus, even as we enter the new millennium, that job allocation and rewards should be based on merit, and not seniority or social connections. The rationale being that the merit criterion, tempered by equality of opportunity and social justice, can satisfy both equity and efficiency considerations, resulting in motivated individuals and effective organizations.However, in his paper, Appold proposes that the usefulness of meritocracy is context-bound. He argued that in the more stable and predictable environment of the 20th century industrial societies, meritocracy had contributed to economic growth, but not so in the knowledge-based economy where "tasks and needs rapidly shift", thereby rendering it more difficult to define beforehand what constitutes good job performance; and to know with certainty what qualities would bring about good job performance.My contention is that while it is true that economies and businesses encounter a more turbulent, complex, and uncertain environment in the age of globalization, and that the skills and motivation expected of employees may be qualitatively quite different from that required in the old economy, these do not at all warrant our ushering out meritocracy. Indeed, just as organizations need to be flexible in order to survive and thrive in the new millennium, there are good reasons to keep meritocracy, as a principle, intact, while ensuring that whatever meritocratic systems adopted remain flexible and open to revisions corresponding to environmental and organizational changes. The bottom-line is that business organizations do need people with appropriate skills and expertise, even personality, to stay competitive. On logical grounds alone, it is difficult to figure out how organizations could survive and thrive without having a structure and people who could adapt to changes. In short, some notion of good performance is inevitable, and organizations do need to 275 Singapore Econ. Rev. 2001.46:275-278. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN on 02/03/15. For personal use only.

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