A Comparison of Long-Haul and Short-Haul Business Tourists of Hong Kong

A number of studies have demonstrated the impact of distance on the volume, profile and behavior of pleasure tourists. To date, none has examined the effect of distance on business tourists, even though they represent a significant share of all travel. Distance exerts two inter-related effects on travel. The decaying effect on demand with increased distance is well established. Distance also acts as a “filter”, advantaging some groups for short-haul travel and effectively excluding others from long-haul travel. This filtering effect results in substantially different observed behavior between short and long-haul pleasure markets. This study examines the filtering effect of distance on tourist profile and subsequent behavior of business travelers who visited Hong Kong. The sample includes eight short-haul and six long-haul markets. Substantial differences are observed in the profile and resultant behaviors of the two cohorts, although the differences are more subtle among business tourists than pleasure tourists.     

Exchange rate pass-through in a small open economy: the Anglo-Irish case

Bilateral import unit values are constructed to investigate the extent and speed of exchange rate and production cost pass-through into the unit values of Irish imports (total and sectoral) from the UK using Menon's (1996 Menon, J. 1996. The degree and determinants of exchange rate pass-through: market structure, non-tariff barriers and multinational corporations. Economic Journal, 106(435): 434–44.  ) mark-up model. The approach used to measure exchange rate pass-through is based on cointegration and error-correction modelling and the period of analysis is from 1979 to 1995. Full pass-through from the bilateral Irish pound–Sterling exchange rate and from UK producer costs could not be rejected for total and sectoral import unit values for the sample period 1979q1–1995q4. This implies no role for domestic competing prices in explaining the long-run relationship determining unit values of Irish imports from the UK. The results indicate that for aggregate and sectoral unit values of Irish imports from the UK pass-through is incomplete in the short-run.     

‘Nothing gets done and no one knows why’: PCS and workplace control of Lean in HM Revenue and Customs

This article examines the willingness and capacity of public sector unions to mobilise action against changes in the labour process in order to maintain some measure of control at the point of production. Taking as an instance an extended dispute in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs over the introduction and impact of Lean processes, it marshals evidence gathered from documentary sources, branch representatives and national lay full‐time officers to engage with the notion of a trade union bureaucracy. In taking a union with a left‐wing leadership and a section with 80 per cent membership with an expressed willingness to escalate industrial action, the article tests Hyman's 1979 contention that, rather than a concentration on a bureaucratic caste, a much better explanation for conservatism centres on the nature of social relations within the union that encompass a wider layer of representatives.     

Employee share ownership and performance: golden path or golden handcuffs?

Using matched employer-employee data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, it is suggested that the presence of employee share ownership at a workplace is not significantly associated with employee commitment to the organization. There is evidence of a significant negative relationship between share ownership and workplace turnover, which explains part of the positive share ownership/performance relationship. This calls into question the postulate that share ownership has its main impact upon performance via the closer alignment of employees' and employers' values and interests – the golden path – rather than the lowering of employee turnover – the golden handcuffs.     

Quantitative narrative analysis software options compared: PC-ACE and CAQDAS (ATLAS.ti, MAXqda, and NVivo)

This paper shows how to carry out quantitative narrative analysis (QNA) with different text analysis software (PC-ACE, Program for Computer-Assisted Coding of Events, and various CAQDAS programs, Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software: ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, and NVivo). QNA is a methodological approach to narrative texts that exploits invariant properties of narrative (namely, a “story grammar”, based on actors, actions, and their attributes) to make a statistical analysis of words possible. In comparing PC-ACE and CAQDAS, the paper leads the reader through the steps involved in setting up a grammar, in data entry, and in data query. A careful comparison of limits and possibilities of the two types of software will allow the reader interested in QNA to make an informed choice between a full implementation of QNA in a specialized but unknown software (PC-ACE) and a limited implementation in any of the widely used and popular CAQDAS programs.     

Research Methods in Taxation Ethics: Developing the Defining Issues Test (DIT) for a Tax-Specific Scenario

This paper reports on the development of a research instrument designed to explore ethical reasoning in a tax context. This research instrument is a version of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) originally developed by Rest [1979a, Development in Judging Moral Issues (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN); 1979b, Defining Issues Test (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)], but adapted to focus specifically on the environment encountered by tax practitioners. The paper explores reasons for developing a context- (and profession-) specific test, and details the manner in which this was undertaken. The study on which it is based aims to compare the reasoning of tax practitioners in the tax-specific context and in the general social context covered by the original DIT, and to compare this with the reasoning of non-specialists in these two contexts. The paper therefore also considers the issues that arise when using such tests to compare reasoning in different domains or to compare groups. The focus on instrument development to measure ethical reasoning in a specific domain will contribute to the literature on research methods in the area of the DIT and will facilitate cross-study comparisons.     

Workplace Spirituality and Business Ethics: Insights from an Eastern Spiritual Tradition

The author extends theory on the relationship between workplace spirituality and business ethics by integrating the “yamas” from yoga, a venerable Eastern spiritual tradition, with existing literature. The yamas are five practices for harmonizing and deepening social connections that can be applied in the workplace. A theoretical framework is developed and two sets of propositions are forwarded. One set emanates from the yamas and another one conjectures relationships between spirituality and business ethics surfaced by the application of these spiritual practices from yoga.     

Using tracking technology to improve marketing: insights from a historic town in Tasmania,Australia

ABSTRACT

This study examines the movement patterns of different market segments in an historic town. It combines traditional visitor surveys with a bespoke tourist tracking application. Two analytical stages were undertaken. The first involved analyzing the movements of tourist segments and revealed that “heritage” tourists tended to visit for the shortest lengths of time. The second phase revealed that a visit of between one and two hours seemed to provide the best opportunity to explore the village fully, while shorter and longer stays did not. The insights challenge traditional notions that heritage-oriented tourists should form the target market for historic communities.     

Hypothetical extractions from a global perspective

ABSTRACT

The hypothetical extraction method (HEM) has been widely used to measure interindustry linkages and the importance of industries. HEM considers the hypothetical situation in which a certain industry is no longer operational. HEM was developed for national economies, using national input–output tables. When performing HEM, it is assumed (often implicitly) that the input requirements that were originally provided by the extracted industry are met by additional imports in the post-extraction situation. Applying HEM to global multiregional input–output tables then causes serious problems. It is no longer sufficient to assume that the required inputs are imported. Instead, it is necessary to indicate explicitly how much is imported from each origin to replace the original inputs. Our adaptation of HEM is the global extraction method (GEM). As an illustration, GEM is applied to the extraction of the motor vehicle industry in China, the US, and Germany, using the 2014 WIOD input–output table.