Going green: Decisional factors in small hospitality operations

This paper reports on research into the factors that influence the adoption of environmental measures in small hospitality firms. The research found that the decision to become environmentally involved had been a value-driven journey, influenced primarily by the development of environmental consciousness. Personal, socio-cultural and situational factors were other significant influences. The paper argues the importance of appreciating the personal and contextual circumstances of individual business-owners to understand their decision-making and operational approach. Further, it points to the value in making operators aware that going green need not involve a major change or capital outlay but can grow in accordance with the business’ needs and priorities.     

Cross-functional interface and disruption in CRM projects: Is marketing from Venus and information systems from Mars?

Because of the inherently cross-functional nature of customer relationship management, the use of cross-functional teams in CRM project implementations is virtually mandatory to achieve critical marketing and sales objectives. This study examines the effects of functional membership as well as team and individual performance evaluations on project members' perceptions of disruption and cooperation during CRM project implementations. The results show that IS project members are more likely to perceive internal volatility and manifest interfunctional conflict and less likely to perceive interfunctional cooperation than project members from either sales/marketing or general management. We also find that team performance evaluations are negatively associated with disruption and positively associated with cooperation, while individual evaluations are negatively associated with internal volatility.     

Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media,and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy

The 21^st century has brought both opportunities and challenges in our global, boundaryless world. Importantly, managers face a dynamic and interconnected international environment. As such, 21^st century managers need to consider the many opportunities and threats that Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers present and the resulting respective shifts in loci of activity, power, and value. To help managers understand this new dispensation, we propose five axioms: (1) social media are always a function of the technology, culture, and government of a particular country or context; (2) local events rarely remain local; (3) global events are likely to be (re)interpreted locally; (4) creative consumers’ actions and creations are also dependent on technology, culture, and government; and (5) technology is historically dependent. At the heart of these axioms is the managerial recommendation to continually stay up to date on technology, customers, and social media. To implement this managerial recommendation, marketers must truly engage customers, embrace technology, limit the power of bureaucracy, train and invest in their employees, and inform senior management about the opportunities of social media.     

Some people just want to read: The roles of age,interactivity, and perceived usefulness of print in the consumption of digital information products

With the advent of digital technologies, both academic researchers and marketing practitioners alike continually seek a richer understanding of the way information is produced and consumed. Against this backdrop, this study explores the relationship between interactivity, consumer satisfaction and adoption intention in the context of digital information products. Drawing broadly on the services marketing literature, interactivity literature and diffusion theory, the results of our study suggest that in a utilitarian context, consumers are more likely to adopt interactive books than more traditional static e-books. However, satisfaction with interactivity is moderated by the age of the consumer, with older “digital immigrant” participants more satisfied by static e-books and younger “digital native” participants more satisfied by interactive e-books. Also, the less useful consumers find print products, the more likely they will be to adopt interactive digital books, and this effect is also moderated by the age of the consumer. Finally, with the proliferation of digital devices only expected to continue, these findings have important implications for both product development and marketing communication programs.     

The production of normativity: A comparison of reporting regimes in Spain and the UK

This paper contributes to understandings of the production of normativity, i.e. the ways in which actors come to see rules as binding, in the context of corporate reporting regimes. Although the accounting literature recognises that a range of actors participate in the regulatory process, it continues to embrace dichotomous explanations of regulatory success based in the distinction between law and non-law, with law emanating from a binding system of rules, codified through state legislation and enforced by a coercive Westphalian state. Following this understanding there are calls for further regulation of reporting regimes in the literature. This paper demonstrates how a constructivist perspective can provide new insights to existing debates over regulation. More specifically, this theoretical perspective is applied to explore the production of normativity in two reporting regimes addressing environmental issues. One (the Spanish case study) was characterised by formal law enacted by the state which nonetheless lacked normativity. The other (the UK case study) was characterised by informal law induced by non-governmental organisations which appeared to acquire normativity. The problematisation of regulatory authority and legality offered by regime theory, constructivism and understandings of the processes by which norm cascades are generated reveals that, the internal legitimacy of the law is crucial in the construction of normativity and that while this was found in the UK case study, it was lacking in the Spanish case. These findings provide a more subtle set of considerations for understanding the role of regulation in reporting.     

Resource price trends and development prospects

If natural resource prices follow exogenous paths, then future resource price changes must be reflected in current measures of resource depletion, as shown by Vincent et al. (1997). This result is extended to the measurement of income and saving in a small resource exporting economy. A precise formula for net (genuine) saving is derived when resource prices grow exogenously at the international interest rate. Empirical results are presented for over 100 countries and a dozen resource commodities, using historical real price trends to forecast future prices. Reductions in saving in excess of 1% of GNI are observed for over 20 countries.JEL Classification: F18, Q01, Q32, Q56 Correspondence to: Kirk HamiltonKatharine Bolt: The opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the World Bank. The financial support of the Swedish International Development Agency is gratefully acknowledged.     

Estimating Permanent and Transitory Components of GNP Using Consumption Information

This paper estimates permanent and transitory components of GNP using an unobserved components model that incorporates consumption information. Agents that discriminate between permanent and transitory as well as anticipated and unanticipated changes in GNP signal the persistence of a change in GNP by the size of their consumption response. Consumption data have previously been employed to discern permanent and transitory properties of GNP using a vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The unobserved components approach used in this paper has several advantages over the VAR approach and provides new evidence concerning the two components.     

Using Aggregate Time Series Variables to Forecast Notices of Default

This paper emphasizes the economic variables and data used to model notices of default in California. Forecast models are notoriously complicated and require sophisticated software to run. Few businesses, particularly small enterprises, have the necessary resources to engage in large-scale model building. Datasets can be difficult and expensive to obtain and usually require significant analysis. The paper focuses on methodology to give the model a general appeal.     

Achieving benchmark financial performance in CAHs: lessons from high performers

CEOs and CFOs of 19 critical access hospitals (CAHs) that achieved benchmark financial performance over three years were interviewed regarding the strategies they use. The interviews identified nine success factors for exemplary financial performance that were common to all or most of the 19 hospitals. All of the participating executives agreed that other CAHs would likely benefit from applying these nine success factors.