Application of the Delphi Technique to Rural Tourism Project Evaluation

This paper details the merit, challenges and shortcomings of the Delphi Technique as a means of obtaining data for a project aimed at formulating an evaluation framework for application in the development and management of rural tourism projects. Participation in the Delphi Survey was sought from expert panellists in both South Africa and Britain from four different stakeholder sectors of expertise – academics, the public sector, consultants and the operational sector. No single research method could have elicited the comprehensive information sought by this study. Whilst the Delphi Technique was considered the most effective means of soliciting group input and opinion forming by a panel of experts utilising a manageable method, it was unable to facilitate the in-depth discussion and enriched text required to gain a fuller understanding of significant and contentious issues.     

In Pursuit of Dignity and Social Justice: Changing Lives Through 100?% Inclusion—How Gram Vikas Fosters Sustainable Rural Development

This case study investigates Gram Vikas?? innovative social entrepreneurial approach to sustainable rural development through its ??Water and Sanitation Programme??. We explore its key innovation of 100?% inclusion and the process of creating democratic, self-governing management systems. This allows us to demonstrate how a social enterprise tries to realize its vision of ??an equitable and sustainable society where people live in peace with dignity??, and ultimately, how it contributes to the United Nations Millennium Goals of improving health, empowering women and breaking the vicious circle of poverty. We also discuss the management challenges that the organisation faces in the area of finance, personnel management and scaling up.     

Mapping patterns of well-being and quality of life in extended Europe

In this paper, we have applied a powerful clustering procedure (the two-step cluster analysis or BIRCH algorithm) to a set of non-monetary indicators of well-being and quality of life taken from the first four waves of the European Social Survey. By employing this technique, we have identified nine clusters of people characterized by different forms of well-being and quality of life, while preserving as much as possible the multidimensional information contained in the preselected indicators. We then analyzed the distribution of the clusters among the various European countries, finding significant differences among the groups of Nordic countries, Continental European countries, Mediterranean European countries and Eastern European countries in the chances of belonging to the nine forms of well-being and quality of life previously identified. On average, citizens of the Nordic countries, but also those of Switzerland and Luxembourg, have a higher chance of belonging to cumulative clusters of well-being than countries in Continental Europe and Eastern Europe. In very concise terms, the former appear to be somewhat protected from the risk of incurring the more severe forms of material deprivation, distrust of others and of institutions, poor health and relational isolation. In contrast, Eastern Europeans are characterized by particularly pronounced levels of deprivation across multiple dimensions.     

Recent Developments at the CMA: 2018–2019

We discuss three important cases that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has completed over the past year: The first two cases—the Experian/ClearScore merger and the Hotel Online Booking enforcement case—demonstrate our recent work on digital industries. We provide an overview of developments in this area and the CMA’s evolving approach to addressing such cases. The third case was a proposed merger between two of the UK’s largest grocery chains: Sainsbury’s and Asda. This proposed merger was ultimately prohibited by the CMA.

     

Exploring Communication Activities in Online Communities: A Longitudinal Analysis in the Financial Services Industry

Online communities (OCs) are seen as important stimulus to electronic business. However, surprisingly little is known about how the communication activity of their participants develops and changes over time. A longitudinal study bears the potential to better elaborate the enabling and inhibiting factors of the participant's communication activity in OCs. To explore these phenomena, we aimed to develop a conceptual framework that serves as a foundation to guide an explorative data analysis of real OCs. We use the notions of common ground, information overload, interactivity, and social loafing to explain the communication activity of the participants in OCs. The empirically explored framework will help organizations to support the development of OCs and utilize them in an economically successful way.

Based on a literature review, we developed a first conceptual framework. Then, we apply it to describe the development of the communication activity and its determinants in an OC hosted by a German financial service provider. In this study, we examined over 33,000 participants and 1.03 million messages over a period of 3 years. We found a strong effect of external factors on the size of this OC. The size of the OC showed no direct influence on the communication activity of the participants. However, in reaction to the increasing information load, communication strategies changed and herewith influenced the communication activity. The heterogeneity of the participant's activity was growing over time, and a small minority of participants wrote more and more of the postings.     

The Commissioning Process in the NHS: The theory and application

The concept of ‘capacity building’ is explored, through illustration and critique of the concept's development in the international, national and local community literature. Theoretical strands where the concept belongs partially include community development theory, agency theory and stewardship theory. The concept is examined in the context of new public management thinking, and its discovery by professionals to enhance their community roles is highlighted. Findings from micro-level case study research among local community organizations are reported, suggesting organizational scepticism about its meaning and outcomes, and producing a preliminary typology of organizations' responses to the concept. The article concludes that the concept appears theoretically homeless. It emphasizes the need for clarification of the concept's multiple meanings, so that the chances of useful evaluation of publicly funded capacity building programmes may be enhanced.     

Customization of online advertising: The role of intrusiveness

This study examines the trade-off between tailoring an ad to an individual consumer’s needs and the demand for personal data required to do so, which is inherent in targeted online advertising. Two scenario-based studies in two different industries reveal the extent to which using personal information with greater distinctiveness affects consumers’ sense of intrusiveness and purchase intentions. We also manipulate ad fit to each consumer’s needs and the presence of a discount to investigate whether feelings of intrusiveness mitigate the potential positive effects of fit and discount. Higher degrees of personalization, such as adding personal identification or transaction information to browsing data, increase feelings of intrusiveness, and negatively affect purchase intentions. These negative effects are not compensated for by offering discounts but can be partly mitigated by presenting an ad with a high fit to consumers’ current needs. The positive effect of tailoring the ad is weakened at higher levels of intrusiveness though. Furthermore, high fit may lead to not only higher purchase intentions but also higher perceived intrusiveness levels. Presenting a consumer with a customized ad can thus be a double-edged sword, leading to higher purchase intentions but also greater perceived intrusiveness, which then negatively affects purchase intentions.     

Entrepreneurship and Liquidity Constraints: Evidence from Sweden

Hurst and Lusardi (2004) use a specification with higher‐order polynomials to estimate the relationship between wealth and entrepreneurship. They find evidence against the existence of extensive liquidity constraints in the United States. In this paper, their approach is replicated on Swedish data. A positive relationship between wealth and entrepreneurship is found, which supports the liquidity constraints hypothesis. Alternative methods for handling the endogeneity problem and distinguishing between absolute decreasing risk aversion and liquidity constraints lend further support to the hypothesis. The analysis suggests that there exist liquidity constraints in Sweden, which are possibly more extensive than in the United States.