Tourist districts and internationalization of hotel firms

The present paper brings together two lines of research that the literature has more often than not studied separately: the generation of externalities in industrial districts; and the international strategy based on location advantages. The application of industrial district approach principles serves to identify the tourist holiday districts situated along the Spanish coastline. This is followed by an analysis of the extent to which the degree of firm agglomeration specific to each district, as well as the presence of institutions generating specific technical knowledge, influence the globalization of the tourism sector, both regarding internationalized Spanish hotel chains and foreign hotels installed in Spain.     

玉米临时储备粮收购政策引发的问题及建议--以吉林省德惠市玉米临储粮情况为例

玉米临时储备粮收购政策扭曲了市场价格，由于临储粮收购价高于市场价格，黑、吉、辽、内蒙古等四省区玉米积压严重。本文以实地调研为基础，建设性地提出以市场机制为前提，实行价补分开，增加农田水利建设等政策建议。     

Effects of hiring former employees of multinationals in the absorptive capacity of local firms

The attraction of foreign direct investment seeks, among other things, to increase the productivity of local companies through knowledge spillovers. However, the empirical evidence in this regard is contradictory. One influential factor is the absorptive capacity of the local companies. This article analyzes the effect of the presence of former employees of multinational corporations as employees of local companies, on the absorptive capacity of said companies. The study was done in Costa Rica, a country known for its successful strategy in the subject matter. The data come from a survey applied to 1167 companies by the Observatorio Costarricense de las Pymes in 2011. It was found that the hiring of former employees of multinational corporations by local companies has a positive effect on the index of absorptive capacity of companies in all productive sectors. Specifically, this hiring of former employees increases the index of absorptive capacity by nine percentage points, with differences by sector and the size of the company.     

Bibliometric analysis of absorptive capacity

This study contributes to our understanding of absorptive capacity (AC) by reviewing AC articles systematically using two types of blibliometric co-citation analysis – bibliometric co-citation and bibliometric cartography – for the last 25 years. In total, we analyzed 336 articles (using HistCite) and 2088 articles (using VOSviewer), respectively, finding five research streams in AC: (1) intra-organizational learning; (2) inter-organizational learning; (3) knowledge transfer; (4) dynamic capability; and (5) micro-foundations. This integrative literature review of AC adds to the categorization of the literature, links the international business research to AC, and provides promising future research directions. Our study gives detailed information about the development of each research stream by measuring the number of publications in each stream over 25 years using bibliometric cartography analysis. Based on the literature, we propose 26 future research questions for these five research streams.     

Classification of micro,small and medium enterprises (M-SME) based on their available levels of knowledge

This paper proposes a novel and practical method of classifying micro, small and medium enterprises (M-SME) based on their available levels of knowledge. This classification considers that the specific problems that dominate a company’s operations are related to the level of knowledge available. Therefore, identifying the dominant problem groups facing the company can enable an estimate of the level of knowledge available in the enterprise.Data from 2698 Mexican M-SMEs are used to identify operational problems. The main problem groups are obtained through a cluster analysis. The proposed classification consists of three levels of knowledge based on the interpretation of the dominant problem groups in each enterprise. Each of the 2698 Mexican M-SME are classified by a discriminant analysis.Nearly half of the M-SME are classified as having a lower level of available knowledge, and only 10% are classified with the highest level. No difference is observed between the size of the company and the level of available knowledge. This means that growth in the number of employees and sales of M-SMEs is not necessarily accompanied by an accumulation of knowledge that companies can use to improve their operations.     

The dynamics of tourism discourses and policy in Brazil

This article employs a Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis in order to unveil hidden aspects of the tourism development policy-making process in the UNESCO Espinhaço Range Biosphere Reserve, Brazil. It identifies the emergence of different representations of tourism development and demonstrates the process of social construction of sustainable tourism as an overarching discourse, which incorporates different—sometimes opposing—representations of tourism development to gather the support of people with different backgrounds and interests. However, this research demonstrates that this flexibility caused the sustainable tourism narrative to become a vague and imprecise discourse in the context of the case study, which has been used by the regional elites to conserve the status quo, but disguised as a critical alternative perspective.     

Training in service – importing and imparting customer service culture as an interactive process

Customer service culture initiatives have received renewed academic attention. Recent surveys of employee responses have highlighted the importance of training. However, its precise nature and how messages and various responses are mediated through an interactive and dynamic process have been largely neglected. In addition, employees' experience of customer service as consumers and of its contradictions has yet to be fully explored in accounting for employee responses. In an effort to develop existing knowledge and models of customer service culture, these issues are addressed by drawing on observational research. Four training programmes are examined in varied contexts, including a UK call centre and a Malaysian bank. They reveal a dynamic whereby trainers' anticipation of employee attitudes such as cynicism and the immediate reactions and dialogue of trainees help shape both the service message and subsequent responses.     

知识工作者过度劳动的形成机理探析

近年来,过度劳动在我国呈快速上升趋势,而知识工作者正成为“过劳死”的高危群体.为了有效预防和干预知识工作者过度劳动导致的社会问题,有必要从理论上说明其影响因素和形成机制.本文根据经济学、管理学和心理学的相关理论,将影响因素划分为前因变量、决定变量和调节变量三类,构建过度劳动形成机制的概念模型,从知识工作者的群体特征和个体特质出发,分析各影响因素间的相互关系及其作用机理.总体而言,个人因素和管理因素对知识工作者的过度劳动动机、意愿和行为产生不同程度的直接影响,工作任务因素、社会文化、经济和制度层面等深层次原因构成的环境因素则激励或约束着知识工作者,使其在具备一定过度劳动动机和意愿的情况下,较其他劳动者更容易付出超强度的劳动强度和超长的劳动时间.     

Technological knowledge as an essential facility

The economics of regulation has articulated the notions of essential facility and mandated interconnection. Their application to the governance of technological knowledge can be fruitful especially when implemented by the adoption of a compensatory liability rule and the parallel reduction in the exclusivity of patents. Because knowledge is at the same time an output and an input in the production of new knowledge, exclusivity, traditionally associated to patents, is the cause of actual knowledge rationing with major drawbacks in terms of both static and dynamic efficiency. This institutional innovation can improve the governance of technological knowledge and increase both its rates of dissemination and generation.

Property rights and information flows: a simulation approach

With the growth of the information economy, the proportion of knowledge-intensive goods to total goods is constantly increasing. Lessig (The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world. Vintage, New York 2001) has argued that IPRs have now become too favourable to existing producers and that their ‘winner-take-all’ characteristics are constraining the creators of tomorrow. In this paper we look at how variations in IPRs regimes might affect the creation and social cost of new knowledge in economic systems. Drawing on a conceptual framework, the Information Space or I-Space to explore how the uncontrollable diffusibility of knowledge relates to its degree of structure, we deploy an agent-based modelling approach to explore the issue of IPRs. We take the ability to control the diffusibility of knowledge as a proxy measure for an ability to establish property rights in such knowledge. Second, we take the rate of obsolescence of knowledge as a proxy measure for the degree of turbulence induced by different regimes of technical change. Then we simulate the quantity and cost to society of new knowledge under different property right regimes.