MOOCs in tourism and hospitality: a review

ABSTRACT

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have grown significantly and globally in less than ten years. However, practices and research in tourism and hospitality MOOCs remain nascent. This study proposes the MOOC Components Framework with six groups of course components: scaffolding, lectures, networking, collaboration, assessment, and affirmation. Drawing on this framework and a case study method, the study analyses 18 tourism and hospitality MOOCs from higher education institutions. The results highlight that: tourism and hospitality MOOC offerings lack diversity; the forum is the preferred communication tool; social media are comparatively underused; the discontinuity of MOOC instructors needs attention; and finally, littless multilingual support is available.     

Hotel school alumni’s intentions to use communication channels – a cross-generational comparison study

ABSTRACT

Alumni communication is vital in sustaining the relationship between alumni and their alma maters. This research investigated four cohorts of alumni, and their intentions to use a range of traditional and digital communication channels, including social media. An online questionnaire was sent to 8060 alumni and resulted in 595 usable responses, yielding a 7% response rate. The research results showed that alumni have the highest intentions to use the alumni e-newsletter and the alumni Website and the lowest intentions to use social media, e.g., Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Among alumni cohorts, significant statistical differences in their intentions to use these communication channels were identified. Given our findings, alumni communication staff are encouraged to leverage different communication channels targeting alumni in different age groups.     

Using a dual-frame design to improve phone surveys on political attitudes: developing a weighting strategy for limited external information in Hong Kong

Quality & Quantity - In recent years, rapid increases in mobile phone ownership and decreases in landline users have led to potential biases in landline phone survey estimations. Mobile-only...     

Training and organisational performance: A meta‐analysis of temporal,institutional and organisational context moderators

Drawing on systems theory, we conducted a moderated meta‐analysis of the training and organisational performance relationship using 119 primary studies. We examined the moderating effects of quality versus quantity of training, time, institutional and organisational context factors in the relationship between training and organisational performance. Our findings reveal that training is positively and directly related to organisational performance with no statistically significant difference between measures of training quality and quantity. We found that the relationship was stronger over time and that country performance orientation and country labour cost moderate the training and organisational performance relationship. We found no evidence for the moderating effects of the three organisational context moderators we examined (i.e. industry sector, organisational size and technology intensity). Finally, our results reveal that training type (i.e. general or firm‐specific) does not moderate the training and organisational performance relationship.     

The long‐run effect of government ideology on economic freedom

According to popular attitudes in Western democracies, the choice between right‐wing and left‐wing parties is a choice between socialism and unbridled free markets. In contrast, the cold and staid research of academia has frequently concluded that particular political parties do not really matter, as whichever party is elected will be closely tethered to the will of the median voter. This article considers the effects of the ideology of parties in power over the long run (1928–95) on economic freedom in subsequent periods. Right‐wing governments are found to have modest, positive effects on economic freedom, but the effects are not particularly robust. The findings here are consistent with others elsewhere, which conclude that there is minor, uneven evidence of an effect. Nonetheless, historically small effects may not be indicative of the future, should these effects be poorly indicative of today's tumultuous political landscape.     

Fundamental Analysis: Combining the Search for Quality with the Search for Value

Using cross‐sectional forecasts, we combine fundamental analysis strategies based on quality, such as the FSCORE from Piotroski (2000) and the GSCORE from Mohanram (2005), with strategies based on value, such as the V/P ratio from Frankel and Lee (1998) and the PEG ratio. While all four strategies generate significant hedge returns, combining quality‐driven and value‐driven approaches substantially improves the efficacy of fundamental analysis. Our parsimonious two‐dimensional approach can be applied to a wide cross section of stocks and outperforms common practitioner approaches that require a lengthy time series of data. The improvements in hedge returns hold for a variety of partitions and are robust to controls for risk factors and other determinants of stock returns. While the efficacy of fundamental analysis has declined in recent years, this can partially be attributed to investors arbitraging away excess returns by investing in fundamental strategies.     

You say you want a (Rose) Revolution? The effects of Georgia's 2004 market reforms

After Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union, it experienced civil war and strife for more than a decade. In late 2003, the peaceful Rose Revolution installed a new government that began a series of radical market‐liberal reforms. However, the effectiveness of these reforms was controversial. We offer a rigorous evaluation of these reforms via the synthetic control method which creates a credible counterfactual. Compared to the synthetic controls, we find that the reforms enacted after the Rose Revolution led to significant improvements in Georgia's social and economic development, albeit with temporary side effects and argue that this case provides some support for the effectiveness of rapid, multidimensional reform.     

Assessing cost‐effectiveness when environmental benefits are bundled: agricultural water management in Great Barrier Reef catchments

Using economic analysis to prioritise improvements in environmental conditions is particularly difficult when multiple benefits are involved. This includes ‘bundling’ issues in agricultural pollution management, where a change in management action or farming systems generates multiple improvements, such as reductions in more than one pollutant. In this study, we conceptualise and compare two different approaches to analysing cost‐effectiveness when varying bundles of benefits are generated for a single project investment. Each approach requires data to be transformed in some way to allow the analysis to proceed. The index approach requires the transformation on the benefits side so that the effects of multiple pollutant changes can be combined into a measure for each project which can then be compared to costs. By comparison, the disaggregation approach requires the transformation on the costs side where costs for each project have to be apportioned across the different pollutants involved. The paper provides novel insights with an application to agricultural water quality improvements into the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, demonstrating that while both approaches are effective in prioritising projects by cost‐effectiveness, the disaggregation approach provides more insightful results and values that may be relevant for use as upper value guidelines in future project selection.     

Are remittances good for economic growth? The role of political institutions

Within a sample of 109 developing countries for the period 1975–2014 and controlling for country and time-fixed effects, this article presents evidence that workers’ remittances are more effective in promoting growth in developing countries with strong democratic institutions. The evidence is robust to alternative samples and different measures of democratic institutions.     

Why Do People Leave? a Study Of Nonsupervisory Restaurant Employees’ Polychronic Time Use Preference and Turnover Intention

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to present a comprehensive view on the associations among polychronicity, job satisfaction, work engagement, and turnover intention within a restaurant context. Using a sample of 252 servers in full-service restaurants, structural equation modeling results found that polychronicity positively linked with job satisfaction, work engagement, and turnover intention. An indirect effect from polychronicity to job satisfaction to turnover intention was found. Results can assist restaurant managers in selecting candidates that best fit their organization. It will also assist employees in determining which career path best matches their personality traits.