Identifying Ecotourists in Belize Through Benefit Segmentation: A Preliminary Analysis

Understanding the perceived benefits of nature-based or ecotourism is an important step in providing products usable to the visitor and in developing a sustainable tourism policy. There are few published studies segmenting the nature-based tourism market using a benefit segmentation approach. This study, based on a sample of visitors to Belize, a widely known ecotourism country, identifies tourist segments, based on a multivariate analysis. Ecotourists' comprised less than 20 of the random sample of visitors taken during the tourist season. Ecotourists differed from other segments in terms of social-demographic and trip characteristics, but had similar levels of activity participation. The results suggest several implications for nature-based product promotion and development, and implementation of a sustainable tourism policy.     

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.     

LIBERAL ECONOMICS AND THE RISE OF LAISSEZ‐FAIRE ECOLOGY

The shift in thinking about how to manage national economies and economic systems in the 1980s was part of a broader revolution in intellectual thought. This is seen in ecology, where a shift in thinking about how to manage environments took place at the same time. Traditionally, the environment was viewed in determinist (structuralist) terms, as a system which was susceptible to management and manipulation. Ecosystems were thought to evolve through predictable stages, reaching a climax state. From the late 1980s, ecologists became increasingly convinced that ecosystems, like economic systems, are complex. They argued that while human intervention is often necessary, wherever possible it should be replaced with more natural controls, which can often fulfil policy aims as well if not better than deliberate intervention. Like economies, the best ecosystems are those which largely manage themselves.     

The Impact of Organizational Culture and Reshaping Capabilities on Change Implementation Success: The Mediating Role of Readiness for Change

abstract    It was hypothesized that employees' perceptions of an organizational culture strong in human relations values and open systems values would be associated with heightened levels of readiness for change which, in turn, would be predictive of change implementation success. Similarly, it was predicted that reshaping capabilities would lead to change implementation success, via its effects on employees' perceptions of readiness for change. Using a temporal research design, these propositions were tested for 67 employees working in a state government department who were about to undergo the implementation of a new end-user computing system in their workplace. Change implementation success was operationalized as user satisfaction and system usage. There was evidence to suggest that employees who perceived strong human relations values in their division at Time 1 reported higher levels of readiness for change at pre-implementation which, in turn, predicted system usage at Time 2. In addition, readiness for change mediated the relationship between reshaping capabilities and system usage. Analyses also revealed that pre-implementation levels of readiness for change exerted a positive main effect on employees' satisfaction with the system's accuracy, user friendliness, and formatting functions at post-implementation. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical contribution to the readiness for change literature, and in relation to the practical importance of developing positive change attitudes among employees if change initiatives are to be successful.