Stereotypical Notions of the Entrepreneur: An Analysis from a Perspective of Gender

The principal objective of this paper is an analysis of the stereotypical figure of the entrepreneur in the Spanish context, from a perspective of gender. We provide evidence that the characteristics largely associated with an entrepreneurial individual are stereotypically male or androgynous, with a notable absence of female typologies. Our findings suggest that this relationship has an influence on the continued predominance of male entrepreneurial activity. This study contributes to the growing empirical literature on female entrepreneurship from an understudied perspective; gender stereotyping, demonstrating that socially constructed gender stereotyping persists in contemporary Spanish culture.     

Money,Comfort or Environment? Priorities and Determinants of Energy Efficiency Investments in Irish Households

Energy efficiency is an effective strategy to reduce household energy consumption. Investments in energy efficiency measures (EEMs) result in reduced energy bills and increased comfort for households, while also contributing to national environmental targets. This article examines an energy efficiency scheme in Ireland and investigates the factors that determine investments in energy efficiency measures and the motivations of Irish households to participate in energy saving programs and adopt EEMs. The paper investigates three key research questions: the determination of investments in EEMs, with special focus on motivations and their relative importance; the consistency of motivations over the course of the decision-making process; and the consistency of determinants and motivations for investments in EEMs across different measures. The paper studies the implementation of seven energy efficiency measures in residential houses throughout Ireland. Results indicate that the decision to ultimately apply and invest in EEMs is mainly driven by monetary or economic factors such as gains in energy savings and the private cost of the measures. Comfort gains are found to be a secondary factor and environmental benefits of EEMs are found to be of little concern when making investment decisions. Finally, we suggest focusing on providing information about the benefits of the EEMs on energy savings and improvements in comfort in order to increase the adoption of EEMs by households in Ireland.     

The Pluralist Theory of Ethics Programs Orientations and Ideologies: An Empirical Study Anchored in Requisite Variety

We propose, in this article, a pluralistic theory of ethics programs orientations, empirically derived from the statistical analysis of responses to an ad hoc questionnaire on organizational ethics practices. The results of our research identify six different orientations to ethics programs, corresponding to as many types of organizational ethics practices. This model goes beyond the traditional opposition between a compliance orientation, focused on the regulation of behavior and the detection of deviance, and a values-based orientation, which is said to be more reflective and enabling, and allows for a more sophisticated understanding of the composition of ethics programs. Drawing from the theory of requisite variety, we suggest that these six orientations are not to be considered in opposition but rather as complementary and even synergistic. In doing so, this pluralism has the potential to counter the potential deleterious effects of dominant logics and ideologies in organizations. Our model thus allows for a more empirical analysis of organizational ethics practices and programs and provides a new analytical framework for research and practice in considering the principle of requisite variety in ethics management. This represents, in our opinion, a contribution to the advancement of knowledge and practice in organizational ethics.     

Auctions with costly information acquisition

We characterize optimal selling mechanisms in auction environments where bidders must incur a cost to learn their valuations. These mechanisms specify for each period, as a function of the bids in previous periods, which new potential buyers should be asked to bid. In addition, these mechanisms must induce the bidders to acquire information about their valuations and to reveal this information truthfully. Using a generalized Groves principle, we prove a very general “full extraction of the surplus” result: the seller can obtain the same profit as if he had full control over the bidders’ acquisition of information and could have observed directly their valuations once they are informed. We also present appealing implementations of the optimal mechanism in special cases. For helpful comments we thank George Deltas, David Martimort, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants in Mannheim, Rutgers, Tel Aviv, Toulouse, the Society for Economic Design 2002 conference in New York, and the 2003 North American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society in Evanston, IL. Yossi Spiegel thanks the IIBR for financial assistance and Charles Zheng thanks the NSF for grant SES-0214471.     

Sustainability and visitor management in tourist historic cities: the case of Santiago de Compostela,Spain

Tourism has a leading role in heritage cities and this implies a major challenge. The overall objective of this paper is to evaluate the performance of tourism planning and management with the view of achieving sustainable tourism in the historic center of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The study addresses topics collected during a long research process of more than 10 years, such as strategic tourism plans, the implementation of quality management systems for tourism, the tourist supply and the regulation of flows. The results show a destination that has introduced alternatives to improve the tourism experience and diversify its offer beyond the Camino de Santiago. There is also growing concern in promoting the sustainability of the historic center. From our point of view, the strengthening of synergies between the different agents involved in the tourism sector of the city has been a key factor in dealing with this situation. However, in this sense, the main problem which is decongesting the tourist flows to the cathedral and its surroundings is still unresolved.     

Transitions to Sustainable Tourism Mobility: The Social Practices Approach

In this article, we argue that current research on sustainable tourism mobility can be divided roughly into two streams. One covers primarily the organisational and technological side of tourism mobility, while the other concentrates on travellers' attitudes. To date, these streams have been organised as separate bodies of research. There is much to be gained by being able to create linkages between the two. To do this, tourism research will have to develop a less generalised and more context-specific approach to travelling behaviour. In this paper, the Social Practices Approach is suggested as an interesting conceptual tool to interrelate current approaches. By giving greater consideration to the contextual dimension of tourism practices, citizen-consumers might be mobilised more effectively as change agents. To analyse the potential roles of citizen-consumers in transition processes towards sustainable tourism mobility, two citizen-consumer-led change processes are differentiated. The first is directed at tourists in their consumer-role, by providers developing sociotechnical innovations enabling and tempting tourists to behave more sustainably, and by incorporating consumer-logics in supply. Second, tourists can be mobilised in their role as citizen-consumers through processes of sub-politics, social movements and political consumerism.     

Leisure and its varieties

Three sets of arguments are presented, which are for and against the development of a European Community (EC) cultural policy and also seem to apply to the development of a European media policy. These arguments cluster around the ‘mass’ character of the media, the relationship between economy and culture and the loss of national identities. In a concluding paragraph the arguments will be summarized by presenting two different, and more or less opposite, approaches to the formulation of an EC media policy.     

How Various Segments of Visitors Perceive l’Accueil in the Places Where They Eat,Sleep, and Play

‘Accueil’ is a French word that means feeling welcome somewhere and being introduced into a process that takes the visitor from being an outsider (a stranger) to being an insider (one of us). Accueil also means feeling the host’s genuine pleasure in welcoming his or her guests through words, attitudes, and actions. Based on a survey (n = 1,003) done for the Quebec Department of Tourism¹, we look at how different segments of visitors perceived the ‘accueil’ they received while traveling in the province of Quebec. The results are analysed for lodging, restaurants and attractions. We found that accueil is perceived differently depending on the age of the visitor, the group size and its composition. To a lesser extend, it is also influenced by gender and social status. The characteristics of the trip (distance, purpose and length) have little impact on accueil.     

Is there structure in the selection interview? Evidence from hotels in Switzerland

Many studies have shown that structured interviews have better predictive validity than unstructured interviews. The aim of this study was, then, to examine if recruiters in Swiss hotels use structured interviews to select candidates. Results obtained on 150 recruiters indicate that selection interviews are rather unstructured. They also show that selection interviews are more structured in larger hotels than in smaller hotels and in chain hotels than in independent hotels. Finally, and contrarily to one of the hypotheses, selection interviews are not more structured in four-star and five-star hotels than in three-star hotels.