European holiday-taking surveys—problems of method,measurement and interpretation

“So reisten die Europäer 1982”, ITB Berlin 83. Report on the conference, held in Berlin in March 1983, by Gillian Gardner-Smith of the British Tourist Authority.     

eWOM credibility on social networking sites: A framework

Social networking sites (SNS) offer brands the ability to spread positive electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) for the purposes of building awareness and acquiring new customers. However, the credibility of eWOM is threatened of late as marketers increasingly try to manipulate eWOM practices on SNS. A greater understanding of eWOM credibility is necessary to better enable marketers to leverage true consumer engagement by generating credible peer-to-peer communications. Yet, to date, there is no one framework synthesising which factors constitute eWOM credibility in the online environment. This paper revisits the word of mouth credibility literature and proposes a new credibility framework – the 4Cs of eWOM Credibility: Community, Competence, Content, and Consensus.     

Increasing the Number of Women on Boards: The Role of Actors and Processes

In this article, we offer an approach of how participative stakeholder innovation can be evaluated in complex multistakeholder settings that address wicked issues. Based on the principle of mutual value creation, we present an evaluation framework that accounts for the social interaction process during which stakeholders integrate their resources and capabilities to develop innovative products and services. To assess this evaluation framework, we collected multiple data from the case study of the Swiss Cardiovascular Network, which represents a multistakeholder setting related to the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Our findings indicate that the evaluation dimensions of the stakeholders’ mindsets, the process and context of the stakeholder interactions, as well as the outcomes are useful concepts to account for a cooperative process of innovation in a multistakeholder setting. We discuss both the theoretical and practical insights of our analysis for participative stakeholder innovation.     

Contributions to Canadian economic history: The last 30 years

The cliometric revolution that transformed economic history in the US in the 1960s was soon embraced by Canadian economic historians. Many of the important issues surrounding Canadian development remained the same: the role of resources, the place of international trade, immigration, capital accumulation and interactions with Native Americans, among others. But beginning in the 1960s, and certainly over the last 30 years, economic historians of Canada have addressed them with the tools of modern economics, both theoretical and empirical. We highlight the recent work emphasizing not just the methods but also the fundamental ways our understanding of Canadian history has been changed.     

The Methodological and Ethical Issues of Conducting Management Research in the Voluntary Sector

This article discusses the methodological and ethical issues involved in conducting research in the voluntary sector. By outlining a proposed research strategy the authors highlight the challenges and issues that voluntary sector researchers face. The article concludes that the nature of the voluntary sector and the unique characteristics of voluntary organizations not only impact on the development of voluntary sector management theory but also on the research design, ethics and practices adopted for empirical studies into voluntary organizations.     

Trends in international business thought and literature: The Arabian gulf countries

The Arabian Gulf countries represent an important economic segment of the Arab world and a vital market for foreign investors and exporters. Yet, most observers agree that the past successful economic growth derived from oil revenues cannot continue unless the economies in the Arabian Gulf are diversified and privatized. This structural adjustment process poses many challenges but also opportunities for local and foreign managers. This article reviews selected business trends in the region. These trends concern government economic policies, environmental concerns, services marketing, and management education.     

Towards a Negative Income Tax System for Australia

The undue complexity of the Australian tax-transfer system is outlined as are the associated high effective marginal tax rates for many individuals and families. A negative income tax system is a possible solution to these problems.
The most radical version of negative income tax is a 'basic income/flat tax' system which combines universal tax credits (that vary according to presence of children, disability etc.) and a flat tax rate on private income. Using NATSEM's microsimulation model STINMOD it is found that to ensure that no current social security beneficiaries become worse off under such a system would either be very expensive to introduce or require a tax rate that is likely to be unacceptably high. Less radical versions of negative income tax are also costed, incorporating the possibility of varying tax rates, the tapering out of tax credits, and placing some restrictions on the granting of tax credits. This makes negative income tax look more feasible.
The analysis does not incorporate behavioural responses. Since the motivation for a negative income tax system is largely to achieve such responses (for example, labour supply responses), this feasibility analysis might have been unduly harsh. Research is required to incorporate behavioural responses into the analysis.     

Competitiveness and the Benchmarking of Nations—A Critical Reflection

This paper provides a critical evaluation of the role and validity of indices used to measure national competitiveness. It examines the growth in the number and range of such indices and explores their growing importance in benchmarking national economic performance. It also provides a detailed critical interrogation of four of the most commonly used indices, and examines their robustness in relation to their ability to predict overall economic performance. The results indicate that the indices are poor proxies and predictors of growth and are thus potentially misleading for policy-makers. The paper concludes by reflecting on the broader benchmarking and image-making role played by competitiveness indices.