Supply management practices and performance in the Canadian hospitality industry

As the competition to gain customers becomes more intense, the hospitality industry has faced increasing pressure to find new approaches to create and deliver value to customers through supply chain management (SCM) practices. Over the past decade there has been a growing realization of the important contribution that purchasing and supply management can have on an organization's performance. This paper addresses SCM practices, with an emphasis on strategic purchasing (SP), in one sector of the Canadian hospitality industry. Using data collected from 105 Canadian hotels, this study tested seven hypotheses of the impact of SP on SCM practices and verified the impact on the hotel's performance. All of the hypothesized relationships were supported. The results indicate that SP is positively related to the relationship with the supplier (SR), communication (COM), service quality (SQ), financial performance (FINP), and customer satisfaction performance (CUSP). The managerial and research implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.     

Multinationals in the Middle East: Challenges and opportunities

This introduction to the special issue on Multinationals in the Middle East first reviews the historical growth and development of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the territory extending from Morocco to Turkey alongside the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean as far east as Iran, and south to Sudan and Yemen. Then, several opportunities and challenges affecting MNEs in the region are discussed, including economic and social diversity, non-market strategies and entry-mode choices, and animosity toward MNEs. The seven papers featured in the special issue that address these topics are then discussed.     

Drivers of Green Supply Chain in Emerging Economies

In spite of the burgeoning interest in green supply chain management in Western developed countries and large emerging economies, little research exists on the topic in small emerging and developing countries. In this study, we surveyed firms based in Dubai to identify the main drivers of green supply chain management and their impact on supply chain greening. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications of the findings. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

First mover advantages in international business and firm‐specific political resources

While the currently prevailing conceptual framework of first mover advantages (FMAs) specifies various market mechanisms through which first movers can gain pioneering benefits, it is incomplete by failing to consider the role of political resources in creating FMAs. In this context, this article aims to add the political mechanism to the current classification of FMA mechanisms. The article further serves as a window to an understanding of the long‐term process of acquiring, sustaining, and exploiting firm‐specific political resources in international business, which has been neglected in prior studies on business–government relations. Detailed analysis of three case studies suggests that the causal relationship between political resources and FMAs is a complex one; while non‐market strategies can be used successfully by first movers, they can also be used by late movers to neutralize FMAs. The article proposes a model for understanding the link between FMAs and political resources. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

北京诺富特三元酒店 商务旅行者的明智之选

北京诺富特三元酒店坐落于北京中央商业区的心脏地带,毗邻新建的机场高速三元桥站,是紧靠三元桥的凤凰城的一部分。该地区被高档办公楼和国际会议与展览中心所环绕,是众多大型国际及国内企业的所在地。     

Bio-economic modelling of soil erosion externalities and policy options: a Tunisian case study

Soil erosion is one of the most important of today’s environmental externalities and a major threat to sustainability of agricultural system. It constitutes the most widespread forms of land degradation throughout the world. The aim of this paper is to estimate the amount of soil erosion generated by the current cropping systems in Tunisia and to assess the economic and ecological impacts of policy instruments designed to handle this problem. The analysed policy options are based on soil conservation practices and direct incentive farming anti-erosive measures. The selected measures are the reduction of tillage, the avoidance of bare fallow and the use of legume-based crop rotation. A bio-economic modelling framework coupling the biophysical model EPIC to a non-linear dynamic programming farm model was used for this impact analysis. It was performed in a set of representative farms belonging to a region in North-Eastern Tunisia (Zaghouan) strongly affected by this phenomenon. The main finding of this research is the non-convexity of the crop yield—soil erosion space. That is, the use of more intensive techniques to increase productivity (i.e. crop yield) may be accompanied by rough changes in soil erosion (damage) curves, manifested either by non-monotony or non-convexity. In term of policy options and because of giving up convexity assumptions, incentive anti-erosive measures appear more efficient than conventional environmental policies such as Pigouvian taxes or quota systems. The implementation of soil conservation practices would leads to a net decrease in soil erosion and an increase in farm income. However, with the current interest rate of 7% the possible rise in income is not enough to stimulate farmers to invest on these practices. A maximum rate of 4% would be necessary to make this policy option more effective.     

Threshold Effects on the Relationship Between Inflation Rate and Economic Growth in Tunisia

Using an econometric technique suggested by Hansen [(2001). The new econometrics of structural change: Dating breaks in U.S. Labor productivity. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15, 117–128], this paper studies the inflation–economic growth nexus in the case of Tunisia for the 1993-01–2012-11 period. The results show that there is one inflation threshold value that does exist for Tunisia. This evidence strongly sustains the view that the relationship between inflation rate and economic growth is non-linear. The estimated threshold regression model suggests that a threshold value of inflation rate below 3.48% fosters economic growth. In addition, above this threshold level, there is a statistically significant negative relationship between inflation rate and economic growth. These results have important implications to policy-makers who should pay attention to the inflation phenomena. Therefore, a new policy that takes into account such a threshold should be set up.     

Commentary on: “Talent—innate or acquired? Theoretical considerations and their implications for talent management”

This paper provides a commentary on the article in this special issue by Meyers, van Woerkom, and Dries (2013—this issue) on the meaning of the term ‘talent’ with a particular focus on the extent to which talent is an innate construct (nature), mostly acquired (nurture), or more based on an interaction of the two. While acknowledging Meyers et al.'s comprehensive and convincing overview of the differing perspectives on talent as innate versus acquired, we expand on their ideas in two important ways. Firstly, moving beyond debates on the exclusivity versus inclusivity of conceptualizations, we argue that the key focus for organizations should be on maximizing value creation through calibrating the level of talent required by the organization and ensuring that talents are deployed in those strategic jobs with the greatest potential for value creation. Secondly we touch on the translation of talent into performance in the organizational context by bring the import of context to the fore. We conclude with some directions for further study.     

Representing Heterogeneity in Consumer Response Models 1996 Choice Conference Participants

We define sources of heterogeneity in consumer utility functions relatedto individual differences in response tendencies, drivers of utility, formof the consumer utility function, perceptions of attributes, statedependencies, and stochasticity. A variety of alternative modelingapproaches are reviewed that accommodate subsets of these various sourcesincluding clusterwise regression, latent structure models, compounddistributions, random coefficients models, etc. We conclude by defining anumber of promising research areas in this field.