Factors affecting the knowledge sharing attitude of hotel service personnel

The accumulation and sharing of knowledge is an important managerial approach to attracting customers and increasing customer satisfaction. However, knowledge sharing is not an automatic behavior. The primary purpose of this study is to understand the organizational and personal factors motivating employees to share knowledge. Personnel in international tourist hotels in Taipei who provide front-line services for travelers were surveyed. This study shows that internal marketing and organizational culture influence knowledge-sharing attitudes and perceived behavioral control. In addition, perceived behavioral control influences the relations among internal marketing, organizational culture, and knowledge-sharing attitudes. This research suggests that to develop knowledge-sharing attitudes among personnel that benefit customer service, it is important for managers to model supportive attitudes, give actual support in forms such as bonuses and resources, and develop a culture that encourages personnel to attempt innovation.     

Press media coverage effects on destinations – A Monetary Public Value (MPV) analysis

The present study examines the extent, source and nature of reporting about Spain as a tourist destination among Swiss German language newspapers. By testing a method based on the Monetary Publicity Value (MPV) the media coverage is quantified in order to arrive at a positive image of Spain among German Swiss print press. Results confirm that: a) familiarization-trips account for an important volume of positive news; b) culture and travel news are predominantly positive, a trend not pointed out by journalist researchers because generally they focus mainly on political or disaster reporting; c) effectiveness of destination image management among print media can be measured and therefore targeted.     

The influence of position and gender on personal networks in a UK professional service

This paper presents empirical findings regarding the content and process of personal contact or social networks and networking of practitioners in a professional service. The focus of the study is public relations practitioners operating in seven consultancies across the UK, in Manchester, London, Yorkshire and Cheshire. Using qualitative methodologies including in-depth interviews and network mapping, the study reveals practitioners' network size and variety of contacts, and their role in client acquisition and retention. In particular, the study suggests that position and gender are two key influences on practitioners' personal networks. The study appears to identify that managers may have the smallest networks compared to their colleagues and especially lack weak tie contacts in the form of friends, and that female practitioners may have larger and more varied personal contact networks than men. The study thus offers an insight into personal network membership for public relations practitioners, hitherto unexplored, plus a deeper understanding of interactional dimensions of social networks and the gendered nature of networking in the UK public relations sector.     

Creating customer knowledge competence: managing customer relationship management programs strategically

While increasingly demanding customers have prompted many firms to implement customer relationship management (CRM) programs, little is known about the internal processes that assist organization-wide learning about individual customer relationships. This research proposes a conceptual framework about the internal processes involved in creating customer knowledge competence, which allow firms to strategically manage their CRM programs. The framework is discussed based on five case studies of Canadian financial services firms that have implemented customer relationship programs.     

Forecasting and explaining aggregate consumer credit delinquency behaviour

We model aggregate delinquency behaviour for consumer credit (including credit card loans and other consumer loans) and for residential real estate loans using data up until 2008. We test for cointegrating relationships and then estimate short run error correction models. We find evidence to support the portfolio explanations of declines in credit quality for consumer and for real estate loans, but support for the reduced stigma explanation was restricted to real estate loans. Evidence supportive of household-level explanations of irrational borrowing and unexpected net income shocks was found for consumer and real estate loans, but evidence of strategic default was restricted to the volume of consumer loans and real estate loans, and not for credit cards. We also found that the error correction model gave forecasts of the volume of delinquent consumer debt which were of an accuracy comparable to that of an ARIMA model.     

Non-linearity of scorecard log-odds

The use of linear and log-linear models for scorecard construction is nearly universal. In this paper we address the question of non-linearity in the distribution of a scorecard’s inferred log-odds to score relationship. Linear scorecards are excellent and robust ranking tools, but the inferred default probabilities are increasingly used in day-to-day business operations — within account-level strategies, for cutoff setting, and for capital allocation. All of these uses are dependent upon the accurate estimation of the probability of default, which is a quality independent of a model’s ranking performance.In this paper we illustrate this phenomenon of a misaligned log-odds relationship within a model built using a method which is standard in retail banking. The sequential elimination of correlated variable bins results in an improved estimation, at the cost of the model’s ranking performance. A post-hoc quadratic transformation of the scores improves the model fit without affecting the ranking performance, but may prove difficult to apply in current operational systems.