Mass tourism and the dilemmas of modernization in Pacific Island communities

This paper relates global discussions of tourism as a means of development to the history of cultural contacts in the Pacific. The paper reviews the relevance of the existing literature on social and cultural impacts of tourism to the Pacific and suggests implications for policy makers and community leaders. The existing literature is found to be methodologically suspect and does not provide helpful knowledge to policy-makers.     

U.S. tourism in Mexico: An empirical analysis

This study estimated demand functions for tourism by U.S. residents in Mexico border areas, the Mexican interior, and overseas. There was no evidence that U.S. tourists substitute Mexico for more distant destinations as transportation costs rise. Border tourism is income elastic when the share of U.S. income of the border states is held fixed. Tourism in the Mexican interior is also income elastic. Tourism along the border is price elastic, while tourism in the interior is elastic with respect to U.S. and overseas prices but inelastic with respect to Mexican prices. The rise in the share of the Mexican interior in U.S. overseas tourism is not related to price factors. Recent devaluations of the Mexican peso are unlikely to provide benefits to the Mexican tourism industry.     

Monitoring Legal Compliance: The Growth of Compliance Committees*

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations’ (COSO) framework outlines three objectives of internal control. This paper addresses the third and least emphasized component, compliance with laws and regulations. We address the growing importance of board‐level oversight of legal compliance and the emerging role of a separate board committee dedicated to the compliance function. A recent COSO project emphasizes the importance of the monitoring function; COSO observes that many companies are not conducting this function effectively. We examine the use of a board‐level compliance committee to monitor legal compliance. We also discuss the roles of corporate counsel and internal auditors in assisting with monitoring. Our results show that over the last 15 years a growing percentage of S&P 500 firms have adopted a board‐level compliance committee. Internal auditors’ specialized training and expertise in the areas of monitoring and prevention would complement the company’s legal expertise and be of significant value to boards of directors in helping them fulfill their compliance oversight responsibilities.     

Economic and social correlates of handicraft selling in Tonga

Although tourism has stimulated employment opportunities in many Pacific island nations, some scholars argue that it has been at the expense of individual pride, cultural values and traditional occupations. Few scholars, however, have investigated whether such traditional occupations are actually available to all segments of contemporary Pacific island populations. Detailed examination of the economic options and activities of itinerant handicraft sellers in Tonga suggests that overpopulation and land shortages severely restrict participation in traditional occupations. Handicraft selling is consequently viewed by many Tongans as an immediate source of much needed cash, having low costs for the producer and providing freedom to participate in other socioeconomic and village activities.     

The anthropology of tourism

This paper considers some of the issues in the anthropology of modern tourism, emphasizing comparative and dynamic perspectives. Building on the works of MacCannell, V. Turner, and E. Cohen, the relations of tourism to ritual, play, and pilgrimage are considered. Two kinds of tourism are identified: periodic or annual vacations, paralleling cyclical rites of intensification, and arduous, self-testing tourism, paralleling rites of passage. The relation of tourism to class, life style, and cultural change are examined, focusing on the factors; discretionary income, cultural self-confidence, and socio-symbolic reversals. The paper concludes with an examination of research methodology and suggests important avenues for further research, including studies of non-Western tourism, of tourism in relation to such institutions as museums, festivals, and theme parks, and of individual biographical recreational and tourist growth patterns.     

Organizing a precarious black box: An actor‐network account of the Atlantic Schools of Business, 1980–2006

There is a growing use of actor‐network theory (ANT) throughout management and organization studies. While earlier ANT research used ethnography to “follow the actors” in the production of organization/knowledge, more recent studies use archival sources to examine developments over time. We extend the latter approach using qualitative social network analysis (SNA) and apply this to a case study of the Atlantic Schools of Business (ASB). Our contribution is two‐fold: first, through an examination of actors in the ASB networking processes over 26 years, we demonstrate how the seemingly stable surface of an organization can hide the precariousness of organizing; second, we reveal the potential fusion of ANT with SNA as a method for dealing with large qualitative datasets over long periods of time. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of price and message-sidedness on confidence in product and advertisement with personal involvement as a mediator variable

Attribution of confidence by consumers when the price of the product is known, has already been investigated in previous studies, as has been attribution of confidence from advertisements' sidedness. This study, based on a 2 × 3 × 2 (sidedness × price levels × type of product) factorial design, focuses in the interactive effects of price and message-sidedness, since consumers are rarely exposed to one single variable of the marketing strategy. A model is developped, which is articulated on the central concept of consumer involvement. It is found that under high involvement, high price enhances confidence in the product (but not in the advertisement), two-sided messages increase confidence in the advertisement (but not in the product). It is also shown that two-sided messages bring about higher-confidence in the product when price is at the medium level.     

A multilevel perspective on the relationship between interpersonal justice and negative feedback‐seeking behaviour

Drawing on social information processing theory, this study uses a multilevel design to integrate the literature on organizational justice with the literature on feedback‐seeking behaviour. Results from a laboratory study with data involving 690 employees showed that individual‐level interpersonal justice was related to employee negative feedback‐seeking behaviour (NFSB) via the mediation of trust in the supervisor. Multilevel analysis of the follow‐up field study with data involving 390 employees from 46 teams confirmed the findings of the laboratory study and indicated that team‐level interpersonal justice was associated with NFSB through a supportive climate. Also, team‐level supervisor support climate was positively related to individual‐level trust in the supervisor. The paper discusses managerial implications of these findings and suggests directions for future research. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Economic Consequences of IFRS Adoption: The Role of Changes in Disclosure Quality*

This study adopts a two‐step approach to highlight the disclosure quality channel that drives economic consequences of IFRS adoption. This approach helps address the identification challenge noted by prior research and offers direct evidence on the role of disclosure quality. In the first step, we document the impact of the IFRS mandate on changes in disclosure quality proxied by the granularity of line item disclosure in financial statements. We find that IFRS‐adopting firms provide more disaggregated information upon IFRS adoption, such as more granular disclosure of intangible assets and long‐term investments on the balance sheet and greater disaggregation of depreciation, amortization, and nonoperating income items on the income statement. In the second step, we link the observed disclosure changes to the benefits and costs of IFRS adoption. We show that greater disaggregated information due to IFRS adoption enhances market liquidity and decreases information asymmetry, but does not affect audit fees differentially. Our evidence has implications for standard setters as they evaluate cost‐benefit trade‐offs when considering disclosure changes in the future.