Interpretation and Sustainable Tourism: The Potential and the Pitfalls

From the outset, proponents of sustainable tourism have, consciously or not, set great store by interpretation, and gradually the linkages between sustainable tourism and interpretation have begun to be developed. This discussion examines the potential benefits of linking interpretation and sustainable tourism and assesses a number of the pitfalls or difficulties which are involved. The potential benefits include improved visitor management, local economic and environmental gains and fuller community involvement. Among the several pitfalls of linking interpretation and sustainable tourism which are considered are the dangers of over-interpretation, intrusion, creating ‘quaint’ tourist landscapes, and those of elitism.     

Economic analysis of different options in integrated pest and soil fertility management in maize systems of Western Kenya

The major biotic constraints to the production of maize, the major staple food in Western Kenya, are field pests such as Striga and stem borers, and low soil fertility. To counter these constraints, new cropping systems have been developed, including “push‐pull,” rotations with promiscuous soybean varieties and green manure crops, and imidazolinone resistant‐ (IR‐) maize. To analyze the technical and economic performance of these technologies, both with and without fertilizer, on‐farm researcher‐managed long‐term trials were implemented over six seasons in two sites each in Vihiga and Siaya districts of Western Kenya. The economic results, based on marginal analysis using a multioutput, multiperiod model, show that the new cropping systems with fodder intercropping (push‐pull) or soybean rotations were highly profitable. Push‐pull is more profitable but requires a relatively high initial investment cost. Green manure rotation, IR‐maize, and fertilizer all increased yields, but these investments were generally not justified by their increased revenue. We argue that research on rotation and cropping systems to tackle pest and soil fertility problems in Africa deserve more attention. This will require increased collaboration between agronomists and economists to set up long‐term experiments with new cropping systems to develop proper economic models.     

Tensions between Value Capture and Value Slippage: The Case of Brand Communities

With the development of intangibles, the issue of value capture has become of paramount importance, especially for firms that have a community of users gathered around their brand. While the notion of utilizing communities may be appealing, transforming the relationship between firms and communities into profit for the firm is less obvious. The dual challenge for firms is capturing the value created by the brand community, while avoiding any kind of value slippage to another actor. From a re‐examination of five cases of value creation with brand communities in different industries, we delineate three assemblages of actors and episodes manifesting value slippage, and two manifesting value capture by virtue of the attitudes and behaviours of the firms that own the brands. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organizational Sensemaking of Non-ethical Consumer Behavior: Case Study of a French Mutual Insurance Company

Researchers and managers alike are becoming increasingly interested in the topic of unethical consumer behavior. Where most studies view unethical behavior as something that is identifiable per se, the authors of the present article believe that it only exists because it has been constructed by people operating within a specific context. Hence the efforts made by this paper to explore, at the level of one specific organization, how interactions between employees and consumers might lead to the construct of unethical consumers. Based on a case study of France’s AMDM—a mutual insurance company set up to serve a client base comprising motorcyclists—the paper addresses how one group of consumers ends up being categorized as unethical by revealing the existence of a sensemaking process within the target organization. This process develops in three main phases: the nurturing of a shared ethos; the protection of employees’ recognized status; and the demonization of any group of consumers threatening this status. Managers incorporating this sensemaking process can avoid or mitigate the negative effects befalling organizations when these kinds of unethical consumer behavior are constructed.     

Rituals in managing extrabusiness relationships in international project marketing: a conceptual framework

The current craze for the so-called relationship marketing in business markets must not mask the fact that, beyond economic and technological interdependencies between companies, business relationships are also made up of social interactions. This social dimension often escapes the attention of marketing theorists although it is of major importance in the management of business relationships. On the basis of an investigation into international project activities, this article develops a ritual approach for managing the extrabusiness phase of business relationships. This ritual approach allows us to build a framework designed to encapsulate and, possibly, manage the many faces of the social dimension of business relationships.     

Employment and training solutions for the economically disadvantaged: An essay

Conclusion The persistence of urban poverty and the presence of economically disadvantaged families in our cities is a continuing challenge to national aspirations for equal opportunity and economic justice. A continuing bifurcation of society between those who enjoy an increasing share of economic prosperity and others who are stuck on the lowest rung of the economic ladder should be unacceptable. The search must continue for ways to improve the productivity and earning power of those who need assistance in getting a foothold on the escalator to a middle-income standard of living. Employment and training programs remain one of the options necessary to achieve that goal. While past programs have not been a panacea, they have contributed to a modest improvement in income among many who participated in them. In the choice of weapons required to combat urban poverty, employment and training programs should be part of the arsenal. The experience of the past, while limited, justifies continued investment in the employment and training option, and the continued experimentation with programs to address the needs of specific target groups. Only by testing new and increasingly comprehensive training models will we find the right mix to accelerate the decline in urban poverty. To achieve success in reducing urbna poverty, it is important to maintain steady, balanced economic growth, and persist in the experimentation with job training models.