The influence of artistically recreated nature on the image of tourist destinations: Lanzarote's art,cultural and tourism visitor centres and their links to sustainable tourism marketing

Can distinctive natural assets in tourist destinations be artistically recreated and used to improve destination image and attract more visitors? This paper analyses the formation of the tourist image based on artistically recreated local nature icons, and shows how those images can enhance the overall destination image. It focuses on the island of Lanzarote, a destination with its development based on promoting an environmental image founded on the creation of a network of multifunctional, high-quality art, culture and tourism centres exhibiting artistic recreation of its unique environmental assets. The methodology utilizes a questionnaire (n = 453) structural equations modelling approach in which the overall image of the destination is directly dependent on the image of the environmental conditions and indirectly influenced by the image of the artistically recreated centres. Results show that the destination's image is significantly grounded on the image of the art, culture and tourism centres using art based on Lanzarote's natural assets. They suggest that destinations have relevant opportunities to artistically enhance natural assets to improve their tourist image and marketing, that quality multi-functional visitor centres can be important within a sustainable tourism policy, and part of the emerging breadth of approaches taken by sustainable tourism marketing.     

Do social networking sites contribute for building brands? Evaluating the impact of users' participation on brand awareness and brand attitude

Social networking sites (SNSs) have attracted increasing attention from brands, which look at the platform as a privileged communication channel to reach their audiences. Despite their growing adoption, few research efforts have been devoted to evaluate SNSs' concrete implications for the brands. The current study addresses this opportunity, proposing a model that evaluates the impact of users' participation in SNSs on brand awareness and brand attitude, the two main pillars of brand knowledge. The study focuses on brand like pages in Facebook, the most used SNSs platform for brands. An online quantitative survey with brand like page users of leading brands in Facebook was implemented. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to estimate the measurement model and structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed research hypotheses. The results identify a significant, positive and direct impact of users' participation on brand awareness. Brand attitude also substantially benefits from users' participation, but this relationship is mediated by brand awareness. The findings help to validate SNSs' significant role on building brand knowledge and to position users' participation at the core of brands' SNSs objectives. Furthermore, the study provides a practical research framework, easily adapted for monitoring purposes and managerial guidance. Future research directions are discussed.     

Corporate responsibility and corporate personhood

In this paper, I consider the claim that a corporation cannot be held to be morally responsible unless it is a person. First, I argue that this claim is ambigious. Person flags three different but related notions: metaphysical person, moral agent, moral person. I argue that, though one can make the claim that corporates are metaphysical persons, this claim is only marginally relevant to the question of corporate moral responsibility. The central question which must be answered in discussions of corporate moral responsibility is whether corporations are moral agents or moral persons. I argue that, though we can make a case for saying corporations are moral agents, they are not moral persons, and hence, we can hold them responsible. In addition, we need not treat them the way we would be obligated to treat a moral person; we needn't have the same scruples about holding a corporation morally responsible as we would a moral person. Rita C. Manning is Lecturer at California State College, San Bernardino. She has published in Southern Journal of Philosophy and in Informal Logic.     

Herd Behavior in Latin American Stock Markets

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the presence of herd behavior in Latin American stock markets using the methodologies proposed by Christie and Huang (1995 Christie , W. G. , &; Huang , R. D. ( 1995 ). Following the pied piper: Do individual returns herd around the market? Financial Analysts Journal , 51 ( 4 ), 31 – 37 .[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) and Chang, Cheng, and Khorana (2000 Chang , E. C. , Cheng , J. W. , &; Khorana , A. ( 2000 ). An examination of herd behavior in equity markets: An international perspective . Journal of Banking and Finance , 24 ( 10 ), 1651 – 1679 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Daily closing prices and trading volumes from January 3, 2000 to September 15, 2010 from the stock markets of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and the United States were analyzed. The US market was studied in order to provide a reference for comparison. The shares for which data was collected in each country were those listed in the most representative stock index for each market. It was not possible to establish evidence of herd behavior in any of the five countries studied using the Christie and Huang (1995 Christie , W. G. , &; Huang , R. D. ( 1995 ). Following the pied piper: Do individual returns herd around the market? Financial Analysts Journal , 51 ( 4 ), 31 – 37 .[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) method. However, evaluating the data for the entire period using the method proposed by Chang, Cheng, and Khorana (2000 Chang , E. C. , Cheng , J. W. , &; Khorana , A. ( 2000 ). An examination of herd behavior in equity markets: An international perspective . Journal of Banking and Finance , 24 ( 10 ), 1651 – 1679 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) we detected herd behavior in the Chilean market. These results were not affected by the addition of additional exogenous variables representing the September 11 attacks of 2001 and the subprime crisis, or when the effect of the behavior of US shares on other countries was analyzed. Asymmetric herd behavior was detected in the Chilean, United States, Argentinean, and Mexican markets.     

A Sorting Model for Group Decision Making: A Case Study of Water Losses in Brazil

Many water supply systems in Brazil have serious problems related to the high index of water losses, which provokes financial and environmental impacts. This is an immediate consequence of an inadequate maintenance plan, allied to natural and budgetary constraints. In addition, in these types of problems it is commonplace to consider the opinions of many managers, such as those from the operational, environmental and financial sectors of Water Companies. In view of this, a sorting multicriteria model to support group decision making is developed. We proposed an approach which sorts the areas of the system which are located in critical zones of water losses into categories, and which takes into account different points of view and considers uncertainty in criteria weights by using only ordinal information, so as to make it viable to manage the maintenance plan and to use the scant financial resources more efficiently. The SMAA-TRI method is used to tackle the group sorting problematic by categorizing the network into zones where losses are intense and thus to focus the managers’ effort on the most critical regions. A case study in Brazil is presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the approach proposed.     

Ethnic identity,socialization factors,and culture‐specific consumption behavior

This study is designed to discover the degree to which ethnic identity and socialization factors influence the culture‐specific consumption behaviors of Asian American young adults, in general as well as in specific situational settings. Findings indicated that perceived parental cultural identification tended to strengthen the ethnic identity, which in turn influenced Asian American young adults' culture‐specific consumption behaviors. However, although their perceived parental acculturation level had no effect on their ethnic identity, it directly weakened the subject group's culture‐specific consumption behaviors. The ethnic‐friendship orientation was found not only to influence ethnic identity but also to influence directly the group's culture‐specific consumption behavior. Further analysis revealed that a situational factor (i.e., the presence or absence of ethnic friends) influenced culture‐specific consumption behavior, regardless of the strength of ethnic identity. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Defining and developing competence: A strategic process paradigm

In this paper, competence is defined in operational terms as the degree to which the firm or its subunits can reliably meet or exceed objectives. Two antecedents to competence (and thus competitive advantage) are then developed and defined. These are the ‘comprehension’ of the management team working on developing competence and the ‘deftness’ of their task execution. Empirical results from a study of 160 new initiatives in 40 organizations from 16 countries suggest that: (1) it is feasible to operationalize and measure these constructs; (2) comprehension and deftness are important correlates of an organization's degree of competence as defined; and (3) a process-centered paradigm for understanding competence development shows promise.     

银行业面临的风险与六西格玛的运用

一、引言 随着日益良好的全球经济环境的形成,以及所采取的增强香港与内地间经济关系的措施,香港银行业已经从"9·11"以来的困难时期复苏过来.