Changes in food provision in Russian households experiencing perestroika

The purpose of this article is to describe how households in Novgorod the Great, Russia, deal with food provision in everyday life. The study focuses on changes experienced in food provision and consumption in Russian society, in order to illustrate how households respond to the transformation towards a market economy. The study reflects women's perspective on food provision. Students from Novgorod the Great visited 105 households and asked the women in the household to answer a questionnaire. Results from the study show that in order to cope with changes in society related to economic reforms, Russian households had changed both their food consumption and food production patterns. There was no big difference between urban and rural households. Nearly all of the households were self‐sufficient in the provision of vegetables and potatoes. Many households had a ‘dacha’ (plot), where they produced most of what they needed. Among the changes experienced during recent years (i.e. during the end of the 1990s), a decade after perestroika was initiated, households mentioned the rise in food prices and the decrease of income. Households reported that they consumed less fruit and/or meat. Some households also mentioned that the quality of nourishment had decreased, thereby indicating lower general quality, lower nutrition value, or less healthy foodstuffs.     

Strategic profiles and performance: An empirical test of select key propositions

Competing theories on internal orientation versus external orientation are examined. The relevant theories are amalgamated and condensed into a number of competing propositions that are empirically tested. The findings suggest that the internally oriented businesses as well as the externally oriented businesses underperform the efficient, marketing oriented businesses.     

The Learning Tourism Destination: The potential of a learning organisation approach for improving the sustainability of tourism destinations

Globalisation, increasing complexity, and the need to address triple-bottom line sustainability have seen the proliferation of Learning Organisations (LO) who, by definition, have the capacity to anticipate environmental changes and economic opportunities and adapt accordingly. Such organisations use system dynamics modelling (SDM) for both strategic planning and the promotion of organisational learning. Although SDM has been applied in the context of tourism destination management for predictive reasons, the current literature does not analyse or recognise how this could be used as a foundation for an LO. This study introduces the concept of the Learning Tourism Destinations (LTD) and discusses, on the basis of a review of six case studies, the potential of SDM as a tool for the implementation and enhancement of collective learning processes. The results reveal that SDM is capable of promoting communication between stakeholders and stimulating organisational learning. It is suggested that the LTD approach be further utilised and explored.     

Career Identity and its Relation to Career Anchors and Career Satisfaction: The Case of Convention and Exhibition Industry Professionals in Asia

This paper explores career identity and its relation to career anchors and career satisfaction, key demographic and job variables, specific to convention and exhibition (C&E) industry professionals in Asia. It reviews the key literature relating to career identity and career anchors, which is followed by a discussion of findings of an online survey of C&E industry professionals in Asia. Study results indicate that the majority of C&E professionals displayed a strong cognitive and affective identification with their career in the C&E industry. However, career identity varied significantly with the time respondents had been in the industry, job seniority and age. In terms of career anchors, the lifestyle anchor was found to be the most dominant career anchor, followed by challenge and autonomy. Examining the relation between career anchors with career identity revealed that the lifestyle anchor was more important to respondents with a weak career identity, whereas the challenge anchor was more important to respondents with a strong career identity. Managerial implications of the study findings and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Overcoming localization of knowledge — the role of professional service firms

The literature on organizational learning asserts that external learning is often limited geographically and technologically. We scrutinize to what extent organizations acquire external knowledge by accessing external knowledge repositories. We argue that professional service firms (PSFs) grant access to nonlocalized knowledge repositories and thereby not only facilitate external learning but also help to overcome localization. Focusing on patent law firms, we test our predictions using a unique dataset of 544,820 pairs of European patent applications. Analyzing patterns of knowledge flows captured in patent citations, we find that accessing a PSF's repository facilitates the acquisition of external knowledge. As the effect is more pronounced for knowledge that is distant to a focal organization, we conclude that having access to a knowledge repository compensates for localization disadvantages. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The HR quadriad: a framework for the analysis of HRM in project-based organizations

This paper introduces the idea of the ‘HR quadriad’ as a framework for the analysis of HRM as a collective, configurational, and complementary system of roles and practices. The framework highlights the interplay between HR specialists, line managers, project managers, and project workers in the implementation of HR practices. On the basis of a multiple case study comprising six project-based organizations, two organizational factors are singled out as important for the design of the HR quadriad: (1) the nature of project work as either intra-functional or inter-functional, and (2) project participation as either focused or fragmented. The paper gives empirical support to recent research on HRM favoring the synergic integration of the elements of HRM systems designed in a way that acknowledges internal coherence and organizational conditions.     

National skill-creation systems and career paths for service workers: hotels in the United States,Germany and the United Kingdom

Creating sufficient opportunities for individuals to develop their capabilities and earn a living wage is one of the central challenges facing all countries. However, some types of vocational education and training (VET) institutions may be more effective than others in promoting the development of career-enhancing ‘transferable’ skills. In order to investigate the links between national skill-creation systems and individual career paths, this study focuses on three countries with very different VET systems: the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. The comparison is based on closely matched samples of three- and four-star hotels. The results suggest that individual career development and outcomes, such as wages and turnover rates, are strongly influenced by the interplay of three key elements – the breadth, relevance to employment and degree of standardization – of national initial VET systems. Our analysis identifies strengths and weaknesses of the different systems and key lessons for improvement.     

Encouraging employees to co-operate: the effects of sponsored training and promotion practices on employees' willingness to work overtime

The ‘mutual-investment’ model argues that when employers invest more in the social exchange relationship between them and their employees, their employees will show more effort. In this paper we relate the ‘mutual-investment’ model to training and promotion (possibilities) and examine if these kinds of career-enhancing measures influence the willingness of employees within organizations to work overtime. To test this hypothesis, a vignette experiment was conducted in five organizations (N = 388; 1,531 vignettes). Multilevel analyses show that employees are more willing to work overtime when their employer has provided for training, when the employee recently was promoted, when the supervisor was supportive in the past and when co-workers approve of working overtime and behave similarly. But we did not find that future promotion chances affect willingness to work overtime.     

The gap between research and practice: a replication study on the HR professionals' beliefs about effective human resource practices

In 2002 Rynes, Colbert and Brown asked human resource (HR) professionals to what extent they agreed with various HR research findings. Responses from 959 American participants showed that there are large discrepancies between research findings and practitioners' beliefs about effective human resource practices. The current research is a replication of the Rynes et al. study among 626 Dutch HR professionals. The results show remarkable similarities with the American study: there are large discrepancies between research findings and practitioners' beliefs in some content areas, especially recruitment and selection. Dutch practitioners are somewhat more likely to agree with research findings when there education level is higher, when they read HRM professional journals more frequently and when they have a positive attitude towards the applicability and usefulness of academic research.