Institutionalization of Ethics: The Perspective of Managers

Corporate America is institutionalizing ethics through a variety of structures, systems, and processes. This study sought to identify managerial perceptions regarding the institutionalization of ethics in organizations. Eighty-six corporate level marketing and human resource managers of American multi-national corporations responded to a mail survey regarding the various implicit and explicit ways by which corporations institutionalize ethics. The results revealed that managers found ethics to be good for the bottom line of the organizations, they did not perceive the need for additional formalization of ethics, and that they perceived implicit forms of institutionalizing ethics (e.g., leadership, corporate culture, top management support) to be more effective than the explicit forms of institutionalizing ethics (e.g., ethics ombudspeople, ethics committees, ethics newsletters). Implications of the survey and future research directions conclude the paper.     

Building a model of local food consumption on trips and holidays: A grounded theory approach

This study examines the factors influencing consumption of local food and beverages in destinations. The study used grounded theory to obtain insight into the local food experiences though interviews with 20 individuals and used these data to propose a model of local food consumption. The model constitutes three categories: ‘motivational factors’ (i.e. exciting experience, escape from routine, health concern, learning knowledge, authentic experience, togetherness, prestige, sensory appeal, and physical environment); ‘demographic factors’ (i.e. gender, age, and education); and ‘physiological factors’ (i.e. food neophilia and food neophobia). This study established an in-depth understanding of consumption of local food in destinations.     

Globalisation and food consumption in tourism

In this paper, the common perception of globalisation as a threat to local gastronomic identities is contrasted by its other facet, as an impetus that opens up new opportunities for reinvention of local gastronomic products and identities. Relevant perspectives and theories of globalisation are reviewed to provide a theoretical framework for the study. Key dimensions underlying food consumption in tourism are elucidated, and the impacts of globalisation on the culinary supply and tourist food consumption are discussed. A conceptual model is developed in an attempt to illustrate the influence of globalisation on food consumption in tourism. This study concludes that from the world culture theory perspective, globalisation can be an impetus to reconstruct or reinvent local gastronomic traditions and particularities.     

Refining the behavior of multiple expert systems: a concept and empirical results

Expert System Refinement (ESR) is introduced as a means to automatically refine the performance of one or more expert systems. The ESR concept is based on Holland’s learning classifier systems and a method for integrating multiple expert systems. Through users’ feedback about the usefulness/correctness of the integrated expert system’s recommendations, ESR enables behaviors of both individual expert systems as well as the integrated system to improve over time. The ESR concept is tested on a German Credit Database. This empirical evidence suggests that the ESR concept can be usefully applied in automating the process of expert system refinement and multiple expert systems integration. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Order backlogs and strategic pricing: the case of the U.S. large turbine generator industry

This paper illustrates the usefulness of game theory for strategic management through theoretical and empirical analysis of price competition in the presence of production backlogs. Game-theoretic analysis predicts a different relationship between relative prices and backlog levels than does analysis that ignores the sorts of interactive considerations emphasized by game theory. Empirical analysis based on data for the U.S. market for large turbine generators between 1951 and 1963 corroborates the game-theoretic prediction. The paper concludes with a discussion of the sorts of situations in which game-theoretic reasoning is particularly likely to prove useful. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Analysis of Congestion Effects Across and Within Multiple Recreation Activities

This paper uses stated and revealed preference data to quantify differential welfare impacts from changes in congestion at outdoor recreation sites that support multiple activities. The results indicate that welfare impacts from congestion vary by congestion point, site, and activity within a given site. Estimating willingness to pay (WTP) for multiple sites and activities allows for parametric testing of whether WTP varies among sites and activities. The most general implication of this study is that if one has the ability to discriminate by activity, doing so is preferable purely in terms of overall model performance. This approach is especially useful for circumstances in which visitor flows in a system of multiple use areas can be managed so as to increase net benefits associated with public lands. Dans la présente étude, nous avons utilisé des données sur les préférences déclarées et révélées pour quantifier l'impact différentiel que des variations de congestion dans les aires d'activités récréatives multiples ont sur le bien‐être. Les résultats ont montré que l'impact différentiel de la congestion sur le bien‐être varie selon le point de congestion, l'aire et l'activité au sein d'une aire donnée. L'estimation de la volonté de payer (VDP) pour des aires et des activités multiples permet de vérifier, à l'aide d'un test paramétrique, si la VDP varie ou non entre les aires et les activités. L'implication la plus générale de cette étude est que si quelqu'un a la possibilité de discriminer selon l'activité, le fait de le faire est préférable purement si l'on considère la performance globale du modèle. Cette méthode est particulièrement utile dans les cas où l'affluence des visiteurs dans un système d'aires polyvalentes peut être gérée de sorte à accroître les avantages nets liés aux terres publiques.     

Food choice and school meals: primary schoolchildren's perceptions of the healthiness of foods and the nutritional implications of food choices

Since the 1980 Education Act, school caterers have been operating within a commercial context and therefore can only provide the foods that they know that children will eat. At the same time, nutritionists have been concerned that the greater degree of choice that children now have at lunchtime is resulting in the more frequent consumption of meals of poor nutritional quality. A knowledge of children's food preferences, the factors influencing them, and their perceptions of the healthiness of foods is needed if school caterers and those involved in nutrition education are to work together to help children choose a nutritionally balanced meal. This paper reports on children's perceptions of the healthiness or otherwise of foods commonly served at school lunches and the reasons for these perceptions. Children's knowledge of the sources of nutrients, their understanding of the relationship between food and health, and how their perceptions of healthiness relate to their preferences for the foods are also explored. The nutritional implications of food choices made by primary school children on the basis of preference rather than healthiness are examined. One hundred and twenty three children aged between nine and eleven from 14 different primary schools in SouthEast England took part. Using photographs of foods commonly served at school lunches, the children were asked to rank the foods in order of preference and then according to their perceptions of the healthiness of the foods and give their reasons in each case. The rankings were analysed numerically and the Wilcoxon's pairs signed rank test was used to determine the significance of the difference. The qualitative data on the reasons given for the rankings were analysed by assigning them to categories. The children were also asked which foods they would choose for the meal that they would be most likely to eat, and which ones for the meal that they thought would be the most healthy. The nutritional value of the two sets of meals were determined and compared. A student T- test was used to determine the significance of any difference between the two sets of meals.It was found that the children had a clear perception of the healthiness or otherwise of the foods. However, understanding of the relationship between foods or nutrients and health was only occasionally evident, as was the idea of moderation or balance. Some children perceived healthiness as the absence of fat while others saw it in terms of the presence of vitamins. It was also found that there was a strongly inverse relationship between children's perceptions of the healthiness of foods and their preferences for them. It was found that while the foods chosen for the ‘healthy’ meal were chosen least frequently for the ‘preferred’ meal, there was no significant difference between the percentage of energy provided by fat in the two sets of meals. However the ‘preferred’ meals did in fact provide a significantly higher percentage of the energy as starch, as well as containing greater amounts of some micronutrients. In other respects the ‘healthy’ meals were indeed ‘healthier’, in that they provided greater amounts per megajoule of some important nutrients.It was concluded that teaching about food in primary schools needs to focus on helping children of this age make balanced food choices. It was suggested that the ‘tilted plate’ model, adapted to use foods that children frequently eat and enjoy, could be the basis of such teaching. Such a model could also be used to help caterers plan menus and as the basis of co-operation between nutrition educators and caterers.     

Identifying Tiers of Influence in Expert Systems Research: II

In the first part of this study we described an objective, multifaceted, citation-based methodology for assessing journal influence. We applied it to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) to gauge the most influential journals for AI research. In this paper we apply the same methodology to a broadened citation base drawn from journals devoted to expert systems (ES), as well as those with a broader AI editorial scope. The result is a pair of journal tiers that reflect the special emphasis that expert system research has among AI researchers in business schools. Taken together, the AI/ES findings reported here coupled with the general AI tiers identified in Part I provide a fairly complete and insightful picture of the most influential journals impacting AI in general, and AI/ES in particular.     

Does distributed leadership have a place in destination management organisations? A policy-makers perspective

Within an increasingly networked environment and recent transitions in the landscape of funding for destination management organisations (DMOs) and destinations, pooling knowledge and resources may well be seen as a prerequisite to ensuring the long-term sustainability of reshaped, yet financially constrained DMOs facing severe challenges to deliver value to destinations, visitors and member organisations. Distributed Leadership (DL) is a recent paradigm gaining momentum in destination research as a promising response to these challenges. Building on the scarce literature on DL in a DMO context, this paper provides a policy-makers’ perspective into the place of DL in reshaped DMOs and DMOs undergoing transformation and explores current challenges and opportunities to the enactment and practice of DL. The underpinned investigation used in-depth, semi-structured interviews with policy-makers from VisitEngland following an interview agenda based on the DMO Leadership Cycle. Policy-makers within VisitEngland saw a multitude of opportunities for DMOs with regards to DL, but equally, they emphasised challenges acting as barriers to realising the potential benefits of introducing a DL model to DMOs as a response to uncertainty in the funding landscape.     

Understanding What Has Been Happening to the Public-Sector Pay Premium in Great Britain: A Distributional Approach Based on the Labour Force Survey

This article investigates what has been happening to the public-sector wage differential in Great Britain over the period 1994–2017. The evidence indicates that apart from men in the lower part of the pay distribution, the public-sector pay premium has declined for all public-sector workers. This decline has coincided with a decline in the overall pay gap, which is associated with changes in the composition of public- and private-sector workforces. As the relative pay disadvantage experienced by public-sector workers at the top of the pay distribution has worsened over time this must raise serious concerns about the ability of the public sector to recruit and retain the staff it needs to deliver public services.