Government regulation and hospitality management

The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the United States of laws affecting business activity. These may constrain managerial decision-making and force up economic costs. Increasing conflict between managers and legal regulators of business activity may result in an era of non-compliance with the law.     

Antecedents of the small firm effect: the role of knowledge spillover and blocked mobility for employee entrepreneurial intentions

Small firms are said to produce more entrepreneurs than larger ones (“small firm effect”). Applying existing theories, we analyze how different management positions influence employee entrepreneurship in small firms. Based on a panel study of 4832 cases, we provide evidence for the fact that small firms indeed produce more entrepreneurs. Moreover, we show that lower management positions of small firm employees are responsible for this small firm effect. We conclude that small firms seem to create an environment in which employees on low management positions strongly benefit from knowledge spillover effects as they are educated necessary skills, knowledge and expertise, and are able to build up networks conducive to entrepreneurship (“knowledge spillover effect”), while not having the multifaceted advancement opportunities as in large companies (“blocked mobility effect”).     

Environmental dialogue in online communities: negotiating ecological citizenship among global travellers

The aim of this paper is to investigate how web‐based online communities bring about new forms of environmental dialogue. We suggest that these online sites play an important role in setting the stage for new forms of cultural production, dissemination of environmental knowledge and environmental dialogue, through which particular forms of ecological citizenship and consumer culture are being created and sustained. Based on an empirical study of an online community of ‘global travelers’ carried out using netnographic methods, the study shows how environmental knowledge is being disseminated, negotiated and made sense of in the online environments of the global marketplace. Our findings illustrate, in particular, how online communities may work out an agenda for sustainable consumption practices and lifestyles, and create new forms of consumer citizenship. Regarding the environmental policy implications of our study, we argue that there is a need to facilitate the creation of online environments where consumers can participate in the construction of active consumer citizenship.     

Exploring the Selective Use of Ad Blockers and Testing Banner Appeals to Reduce Ad Blocking

Ad blocker proliferation threatens the revenue streams of many websites and raises fears about the viability of digital advertising as a whole. Although industry initiatives have increasingly aimed to mitigate ad blocking, surprisingly little research addresses the problem. It remains largely unknown which factors drive ad blocking or help unblocking or “whitelisting” of select websites. This article presents an exploratory survey study of 1,634 ad blocker users and uncovers the main factors driving ad blocking and conditions for unblocking select websites. The conditions suggest changes to online advertising in line with current industry initiatives, as well as opportunities for direct appeals to ad blocker users. A field experiment with 294,331 users tests whether banner appeals can reduce ad blocking. The results show that these appeals reduce ad blocking among 1% of the ad blocker users, and among frequent visitors who encounter repeated banner appeals, this percentage increases to 2%. However, repeated banners also lead to fewer website visits of users not conforming to the appeal, which suggests a trade-off between reducing ad blocking among some users and further increasing avoidance behaviors among others.     

Work hour congruence: the effect on job satisfaction and absenteeism

This study examines the effect of work hour congruence on employee job satisfaction and absenteeism using a large, longitudinal sample from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey (WES). An employee is said to have work hour congruence when they actually work the number of hours that they desire. Results indicate a difference between employees who desire more hours and those who desire fewer hours: employee desire for and receipt of more hours was related to positive changes in job satisfaction, while employee desire for and receipt of fewer hours was related to reduced absenteeism. In addition, the results suggest that employees respond to employers who at least try to meet their needs, those who desired more hours and received some, but not all of these additional hours showed a positive increase in job satisfaction. This study contributes to the literature by using of a precise measure of work hour preference and change, differentiating employees who desire fewer hours from those who desire more and examining both full and partial work hour congruence.     

Subsidies for renewable energies in the presence of learning effects and market power

We study the impact of learning by doing, learning spill-overs, and imperfect competition in a model with two types of electricity producers, an oligopolistic sector of polluting fossil-fuel utilities and a competitive fringe of non-polluting generators of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E). Furthermore we consider an upstream industry of RES-E equipment producers engaged in learning by doing. We show that a first-best policy requires two instruments, a tax in the fossil-fuel sector and an output subsidy for RES-E equipment producers. We then study second-best-optimal feed-in tariffs that are paid to the generators of RES-E. By means of simulations we calculate the welfare loss of a second-best-optimal feed-in-tariff policy and analyze how market structure impacts on second-best-optimal feed-in tariffs.     

Corporate Narratives of Information Society: Making Up the Mobile Consumer Subject

The purpose of the article is to study how corporate actors participate in the cultural construction of the Information Society. By means of a case study, the article explores how a multinational corporation is involved in forming consumer identities—making up the subjects of consumption—by shaping the interpretive repertoires and cultural practices that are available for consumers as members of the emerging information society. The article elaborates on the ways in which the corporation invokes a discourse of shareholder value in its visionary strategic narrative entitled Mobile Information Society, and how this discourse operates to mobilize consumer conduct in particular ways, by making up, framing and formatting the consumer as a mobile subject of the global economy. The article’s aim is to contribute to the empirical bases of policy debates about the roles and responsibilities of different market actors in the production of the information society.     

Consumer Heterogeneity in the Willingness to Pay for Local and Organic Food

Due to growth and changing distribution channels for organic food in Germany, there is some concern that organic food is losing authenticity. Contrarily, local food production is seen as a new trend and is gaining market share. This article analyzes whether those alternative concepts of organic and local food production rather support or threaten each other in consumers’ choice. Results of a Bavarian survey, including a choice experiment for bread, beer, and milk on the attributes price, brand, local, and organic, are analyzed using a mixed logit model. Willingness-to-pay estimations confirm the importance of local production to the surveyed consumers, especially in interaction with organic production, leading to the conclusion that the two production methods can support each other in achieving price premiums. The estimated standard deviations show significant heterogeneity of the parameters for all three products for most attributes.     

New initiative,old problem: classroom assistants and the under‐valuation of women's work

Centred on classroom assistants in Scotland, this article examines the process by which an occupation dominated by female workers becomes under‐valued. The qualitative data reveals the cognitive errors made by the key actors—government, employers and unions in this process.