Understanding the leadership perceptions of staff in China's hotel industry: Integrating the macro- and micro-aspects of leadership contexts

The objective of this paper is to understand the leadership perceptions of staff in China's hotel industry. This study integrates the macro- and micro-aspects of leadership contexts by identifying the contextual variables that affect leadership perceptions. In leadership research, industry setting, the hierarchical levels of an organization, and national culture are recognized as the contextual constraints that affect leadership perceptions, and these constraints were used in this empirical study. Four factors emerged from the factor analysis of a survey study: professionalism; integrity; masculinity or yang; and femininity or yin. A key finding indicates that both the industry setting and the hierarchical levels of an organization affect professionalism. Implications for the training and development of future international hospitality leaders and local staff are considered.     

Planning Histories and Practices of Circulating Urban Knowledge

This symposium creates and stimulates new dialogue and cross‐disciplinary exchange between planning theorists and geographers in researching the transfer of urban policy and planning models, ideas and techniques. The symposium challenges a restricted historical focus in much of the emerging geographical literature on urban policy mobilities by drawing on a rich tradition within planning history of exploring and documenting the trans‐urban travel of planning ideas and models over the last 150 years. It is argued that this longer‐term perspective is required to highlight important historical continuities and institutional legacies to contemporary urban policy circuits and pathways and to question what is particularly new, distinct and innovative about an intensification in the travel of urban ideas, plans and policies over the past decade — and the accompanying scholarly interest in them. The symposium also uses the emphasis on particular details and specific experiences within planning histories to foreground and develop approaches, particularly from recent geographical scholarship, that investigate the contingent and embodied practices and wider epistemic contexts that enable — or hinder — contemporary policy transfer.     

Membership,influence and voice: a discussion of trade union renewal in the French context

Union density in France has fallen to exceptionally low levels, yet unions are able to mobilise millions of supporters against government austerity measures. Some authors therefore argue that the union revitalisation literature overemphasises density over other power resources. The article first confirms the decline of density and the scale of the challenges unions face in organising in the face of restructuring and casualisation. Second, it is argued that unions have retained some policy influence by forming strategic alliances among themselves, although pressures for fragmentation remain strong. Third, unions' mobilising capacity indicates the need to find new ways of coordinating action at all levels. The article thus not only confirms the inadequacy of density alone as a measure of union vitality but also highlights the challenges, and some opportunities, facing unions in hostile economic conditions.     

Rent control according to Seinfeld

More than 30 years after its premiere, Seinfeld continues its run as a seminally popular television show. On October 1, 2021, five-year streaming rights to the show were purchased by Netflix for $500 million. Set in New York City, where rent control laws have a long history, several episodes of the show consider the trials of apartment living, including shortages, tastes for discrimination by sellers, bribery, search costs, and quality degradation. Seinfeld also illustrates the informal process through which rent-controlled apartments are advertised (e.g., less advertising under rent control shortage). This paper argues that popular media can be used as an effective pedagogical tool in learning. This paper analyzes four episodes of Seinfeld to help students identify and differentiate the very real costs of rent control. The paper also guides students to appreciate the difficulty in crafting a policy that is free of unintended consequences.     

Will Labour’s Economic Programme Work?

If Labour is elected to government on 1 May, it will inherit the lowest inflation of any incoming government over the last fifty years but the highest unemployment. At the same time, public borrowing is running at an unsustainable high level. In this article, Andrew Sentance examines Labour's plans to expand employment while reducing public borrowing and containing inflation. He argues that Labour's economic programme could work but a number of pitfalls need to be avoided. Monetary policy will need to be tightened after the Election and the fiscal squeeze implied by Conservative spending plans maintained – if necessary through higher taxes. The benefits from Labour's employment policies could also be undermined by a high minimum wage, particularly if applied to young workers.