Restructuring Huta T. Sendzimira—from the Lenin steelworks to lean production

The article explores economic reform in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan and focuses on its impact on the country's labour market and economic migration. Mass and rapid privatisation and 'shock therapy' have been perceived as the pillars of change in the country. However, the reform was accompanied by a number of negative factors, including fast-growing unemployment, poverty, a sharp decline in industrial and agricultural output and loss of foreign markets. All together, these problems have led to contraction of the local labour market and mass outflow of the economically active part of the population. Using the example of Kyrgyzstan the author assesses the interconnection between economic decline and economic migration in the post-Soviet era.     

Exploration-exploitation tradeoffs and information-knowledge gaps in self-regulated learning: Implications for learner-controlled training and development

Learning in modern organizations often involves managing a tradeoff between exploration (i.e., knowledge expansion) and exploitation (i.e., knowledge refinement). In this paper, we consider the implications of this tradeoff in the context of learner-controlled training and development. We then propose a model that integrates research on control theory, curiosity, and skill acquisition to explain how information knowledge gaps (i.e., gaps between what learners believe they know and what they desire to know) guide resource allocation decisions throughout the learning process. Using this model, we present testable propositions regarding (a) the different approaches learners take when resolving exploration-exploitation tradeoffs, (b) how systematic changes in learner perceptions translate into changes in systematic learner behavior, and (c) how common biases in key learner perceptions can undermine the functioning of self-regulated learning in training and development contexts. We finish with a discussion of the model's implications for the science and practice of training and development.     

Crime and labour market turnover

We go beyond unemployment to investigate how its determinants, specifically hires, lay-offs and quits, affect crime. As expected, we find less crime in localities with higher hiring and quit rates and lower lay-off rates. The size of relationships is on the order of studies analysing the link between unemployment and crime.     

Story and moral development in tourism education

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this reflective, conceptual, and narrative article is to illuminate the promise of story in nurturing moral development, specifically in relation to nature and cultural difference, in and through tourism education. Representing both a reflection on and extension of Zachary’s experience in a graduate level course on Indigenous Knowledges taught primarily through stories, the paper traces how story enabled Zachary to shift into, or sense, new onto-epistemological perspectives relating to nature and begin to question his assumptions, privilege, and responsibilities. We focus in on the story of Mutandum – a narrative of transformation and connection – written by Zachary, which was constructed to represent his relationship to learning during the graduate course. In telling this story, and situating and reflecting on the narrative contexts within which it was crafted, we show the enabling promise of story as a moral pedagogical and epistemological tool. We argue that learning through story has much to offer tourism curricula, especially those focused on preparing values-engaged students with the competencies to take on the multitude of ethical issues in tourism and effectively navigate the moral encounters that arise in our tourism worlds.     

URBAN POPULATION AND AMENITIES: THE NEOCLASSICAL MODEL OF LOCATION

We develop a neoclassical general equilibrium model to explain cross-metro variation in population and density. We provide new methods to estimate traded and nontraded productivities, and elasticities of housing and land supply, using density and land area data. From wage and housing cost indices, the model explains half of U.S. density and population variation and finds that quality of life determines location choices more than trade productivity; productivity and factor substitution in housing matter most, but are weak in nicer areas. Relaxing land use regulations would increase population in the West, raising both quality of life and productivity experienced by residents.     

Supporting New Product Launches With Social Media Communication and Online Advertising: Sales Volume and Profit Implications

The question of how important firms’ investments in digital communication formats are for the commercial success of new products remains unexplored in the product innovation management literature. Drawing on reactance theory, the authors examine the extent to which investments in social media communication and online advertising are related to the sales volume and profits of new products within six months of being launched. Using dyadic survey data, an analysis of new products launched by 122 consumer durable goods firms reveals that sales volume and profits of new products are associated with (1) social media communication in a positive but diminishing shape, and (2) online advertising in an inverted U‐shape. Further analyses show that those curvilinear relationships are steeper for social media communication and flatter for online advertising at respective (1) higher levels of customer product involvement and (2) lower levels of product superiority. The results imply that there is an optimal level of investment in social media communication and online advertising, with the optimum dependent on a new product’s consumer involvement and superiority levels.     

Desperately seeking capitalism: Solidarity and Polish industrial relations in the 1990s

This article examines the contradictory and complex role played by Solidarity in the transformation of Poland since 1989. The organisational and ideological development of Solidarity is traced from 1980 through to 1994 in an attempt to explain an approach best described as ‘desperately seeking Polish capitalism’.     

Sociocultural dimensions of tourism history

This paper explores some of the sociocultural issues that surround tourism history. It is contended that tourist activity is socially differentiated, but that this is by no means solely a product of prevailing class and related structural constraints. Instead, importance must be attached to the cultural setting within which activity is located and to the role of the consumer in creating new opportunities. Two case studies — plotland development and holiday camps — are used to demonstrate the thesis. Conclusions are drawn in respect of the study of tourism history, arguing for interdisciplinarity, for comparative research, and for further work on the inter-relationships between societal constraints and individual opportunities.