Migrant networks, language learning and tourism employment

This paper examines the relationship between migrants’ social networks, the processes of language acquisition and tourism employment. Data collected using netnography and interviews are used to identify the strategies that Polish workers in the UK use to develop their language skills. The paper highlights the roles played by co-workers, co-nationals and customers in migrants’ language learning, both in the physical spaces of work and the virtual spaces of internet forums. It also shows how migrant workers exchange knowledge about the use of English during different stages of their migration careers: prior to leaving their country of origin and getting a job, during their employment and after leaving their job. Implications for academic inquiry and human resource management practice are outlined.     

Fuzzy Rasch model in TOPSIS: A new approach for generating fuzzy numbers to assess the competitiveness of the tourism industries in Asian countries

This study proposes a novel approach, the Fuzzy Rasch model, which combines Item Response Theory (IRT) and fuzzy set theory. This paper applies the Fuzzy Rasch model in Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to analyse the Tourism Destination Competitiveness (TDC) of nine Asian countries: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines. The study was conducted in 2009 using 6 criteria and 15 indices. The results demonstrate the feasibility of applying the Fuzzy Rasch model in TOPSIS to analyse TDC in Asian countries. In addition, the proposed model also provides an effective means of applying the MCDM method to study TDC. Furthermore, in 2009, the Asian countries were ranked from most to least competitive as follows: China, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines.     

Visitor centre staffing: Involving volunteers

Volunteer involvement in visitor centres has received little attention by tourism researchers despite the critical role staff play in welcoming tourists to a destination and promoting tourism activities. The community function of visitor centres - of which volunteering is part - has also been underplayed in previous research. Using data from a survey and interviews with visitor centre managers in Australia, this paper investigates the rationales for staffing visitor centres with volunteers and/or paid employees and, related to motivations for volunteering, the factors influencing the attractiveness of visitor centre volunteer programmes. The dominant rationales for involving volunteers are need, community involvement, visitor experience, and the personal qualities and motivations of volunteers. Visitor centre volunteering is attractive because of location and local pride, interactions with tourists and social relationships with other volunteers, and the reputation of the visitor centre and its volunteer programme.     

Off-season tourists and the cultural offer of a mass-tourism destination: The case of Rimini

This paper assesses the potential implications on off-season tourism of enhancing the cultural offer of Rimini, a popular Italian seaside holiday destination hosting about 12 million overnight stays per year. Since more than 9 million of these stays are concentrated in the summer season, in the last 20 years. Rimini has been undergoing a policy of seasonality smoothing, which mainly pivots around business and cultural tourism. This assessment has been carried out through discrete choice experiments submitted to a sample of about 800 tourists who visited Rimini outside the summer months. Since tourism can be viewed as a composite good, which overall utility depends on how the component characteristics are arranged, the choice experiments allow to disentangle the importance and the willingness to pay of tourists for different attributes of the holiday. The choice model incorporates a number of possible changes to actual tourism features (which are also the subject of public debate), including them in hypothetical alternative “holiday packages”. The conditional logit analysis of the choice experiments can highlight any synergy or trade-off between cultural and business tourism. Results suggest that business and leisure tourists share many features related to the use of the territory, while there are important trade-offs between these two groups and cultural tourists. Since business tourists have a higher willingness to extend their stay, a softer budget, and their demand is also complementary to the demand of summer tourists (Brau, Scorcu, & Vici, 2009), from the destination point of view investing in this market segment would be the best option. Although a “second best”, however, cultural tourists share with the local population of Rimini many aspects of the demand of territory (Figini, Castellani, & Vici, 2009). Hence, cultural tourism can play a fundamental role in the intermediate season as a tool for smoothing seasonality, to diversify investments and to give value to the city’s cultural heritage.     

Organic,incremental and induced paths to sustainable mass tourism convergence

This paper positions sustainable mass tourism (SMT) as the desired and impending outcome for most destinations. Natural resource scarcity, development of green technology, climate change awareness, the global financial crisis, institutionalised environmentalism and Internet technology all facilitate the emergence of sustainability as a societal norm that is combining with the longer established norm of growth desirability. SMT convergence is occurring along three distinctive paths in an evolutionary manner that reflects environmental pragmatism. The market-driven ‘organic’ path describes the conventional tourism area life cycle model of Butler, whilst the regulation-driven ‘incremental’ path entails deliberate alternative tourism (DAT) in which carrying capacities are gradually increased to accommodate higher visitation levels. The hybrid ‘induced’ path describes planned mega-resorts conceived as growth poles. Each model is invested with its own specific planning and management implications.     

Transactional and Value Creational Sources of Dependence

ABSTRACT

This paper critically reviews the nature and the role of the dependence construct in buyer-seller relationships. A distinction is made between transactional sources and value creational sources of dependence, and five different variables: goals, exchange partner actions mediating goals, motivational investments in goals, the availability of alternative exchange partners and switching costs are found to account for what we refer to as “dependence.” The proposed framework adds potential clarity to discussions and disagreements regarding the dependence concept in buyer-seller relationships by providing a unifying frame of reference that permits us to compare the insights generated by different theories. One important implication is that contradictory recommendations of different governance theories are not contradictory after all since they consider different dependence situations. Accordingly, governance choices should be based on assessments of how firms depend on each other, and not only on assessments of how high this dependence is.     

开放视角下和谐经济与中国经济安全

贸易保护和歧视政策正成为当前一些国家和地区维持自身产业安全和经济发展的“借口”，同时又构成国际社会极力拒绝贸易保护主义和主张公平交易的话题。中国经济的高速发展，带动了世界经济的前行。但不容否认，中国经济发展进程中还存在诸多不和谐因素，如经济发展方式不合理、各种贸易争端依然存在等。本文提出了关于化解经济发展中的不利因素、推动多边经济体和谐发展及中国经济安全的对策。     

论跨国公司对华投资与我国低碳经济的发展

跨国公司对华投资促进了我国经济的增长,但同时所带来的环境污染等一系列问题对我国低碳经济的发展构成了挑战.1999-2009年间,随着跨国公司对华投资规模的不断加大,尤其是对第二产业的投资,使得我国环境污染严重,对发展低碳经济带来严重挑战.深入研究和妥善解决这些问题,对于促进新时期我国利用外资的进一步发展具有重要的意义.     

世界经济格局演变中的国际货币格局调整

世界经济发展史表明世界经济格局的演变必然会引起国际货币格局的相应变化,然而历史也同样表明,二者的演变与调整并非协调一致。文章以世界经济格局演变为线索来分析国际货币格局调整的轨迹。在此基础上,对货币格局的调整趋势做出预测,概括出世界经济格局演变中的国际货币格局调整的特征,针对国际货币格局调整得出相应的结论和启示。     

企业战略管理研究新进展——基于制度经济学和组织社会学制度理论的视角

制度经济学视角的研究大多集中在正式制度和非正式制度对企业战略行为的影响;而组织社会学制度视角更多地是侧重于对制度合法性、多重制度压力及国际化等方面的企业战略行为的研究。今后的研究应结合产业基础观、资源基础观等多个理论视角和多层次分析方法,探索制度对企业战略行为的作用机制。