Migration and inbound tourism: an Italian perspective

This paper investigates the impact of migration on Italian inbound tourism flows in a dynamic panel data framework. Arrivals, expenditure and nights from 65 countries are analysed for the period 2005–2011. The migration variable is defined at both origin and destination in order to assess the pushing and pulling forces. Estimates were performed using both aggregated flows and flows disaggregated to separate the visiting friends and relatives (VFRs) from two non-VFR categories, namely holiday and business. The results suggest the presence of a strong migration-tourism nexus, which clearly goes beyond VFRs. Moreover, the effects of the different determinants vary according to the way in which the tourism market is segmented and, within each segment, to the way in which tourism demand is measured.     

Improving the “Leader–Follower” Relationship: Top Manager or Supervisor? The Ethical Leadership Trickle-Down Effect on Follower Job Response

Since time immemorial, the phenomenon of leadership and its understanding has attracted the attention of the business world because of its important role in human groups. Nevertheless, for years efforts to understand this concept have only been centred on people in leadership roles, thus overlooking an important aspect in its understanding: the necessary moral dimension which is implicit in the relationship between leader and follower. As an illustrative example of the importance of considering good morality in leadership, an empirical study is conducted in which a good performance of the “leader–follower” relationship is reflected when individuals perceive ethical leadership in higher hierarchical managerial levels. To be precise, findings of this study demonstrate that follower job response is improved through an ethics trickle-down partial effect from the Top Manager to the immediate supervisor, and also reveal both key aspects and managerial level on which the practice of ethical leadership should rest upon to have a stronger effect on the follower positive job response. Practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are finally presented.     

Success in failure? Reflections on the changing Spanish audit environment

The 1990s in Spain have witnessed a significant shift in attitudes towards the role of auditing, with promises of more transparent reporting being replaced by talk of audit expectations gaps. This paper explores the changing atmosphere, both through an analysis of one of the most notorious scandals of recent times - involving the Banco Español de Credito (‘Banesto’) - and a more general review of the way the Spanish profession has responded to such downturns in public expectations of auditing. While at first sight, the profession appears to have become more defensive and the audit environment more competitive, the multinational accounting firms do appear to have strengthened their position in the Spanish audit market. Intriguingly, despite public expressions of concern with the quality and capabilities of auditing and the imposition of large fines on audit firms for inadequate audit work, proposed ‘solutions’ for improving audit quality include the establishment of a self-regulated audit regime and reductions in auditor liability. The Spanish experience allows for some timely reflections on the significance of an audit expectations gap and highlights the importance of viewing the audit function from an international perspective.     

Exploring the causes of the slowdown in remittances to Mexico

This article explores the slowdown of remittances to Mexico and the role that may have been played by some key variables from the United States economy. The findings show that several measures of United States economic activity and different proxies for the unemployment of Mexican nationals living in the United States do not appear to have a strong impact on remittance transfers. On the other hand, this study finds that United States housing variables do seem to affect remittance transfers. In particular, there is a special prominence of the impact shown by the number of housing starts in the United States. Overall, the results seem to suggest that there is not a single United States economic factor that is responsible for the decrease of remittances to Mexico but rather a combination of factors. Among these factors, the decrease in United States housing activity seems to play a major role.     

Do Individual Preferences Affect the Environmental Decision‐Making Process in Teams? The Role of Participation

Literature on organizations and the natural environment has focused on the importance of individual managers and leaders. However, this literature has scarcely ever focused on individuals in the team context, even when teams have been considered to be key for a firms’ environmental progress. Although teams’ environmental decisions can be enriched by the different contributions of team members, it is necessary that team members actually participate and contribute their preferences during the decision‐making process. We used an adaptation of the legislative dilemma task with 84 students to contribute to environmental management literature by analyzing members’ participation during the team decision‐making process. The results of this paper show how those members with environmentally proactive preferences have a higher participation during the decision‐making process, and as a consequence they have a greater influence on the team decision. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A non-parametric independence test using permutation entropy

In the present paper we construct a new, simple, consistent and powerful test for independence by using symbolic dynamics and permutation entropy as a measure of serial dependence. We also give a standard asymptotic distribution of an affine transformation of the permutation entropy under the null hypothesis of independence. The test statistic and its standard limit distribution are invariant to any monotonic transformation. The test applies to time series with discrete or continuous distributions. Eventhough the test is based on entropy measures, it avoids smoothed non-parametric estimation. An application to several daily financial time series illustrates our approach.     

Sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement in Spain: Different instruments,different quality

The purpose of this paper is to compare the quality of the sustainability information issued following the three most common reporting models: annual report (addressed to shareholders), sustainability report (addressed to stakeholders), and integrated report (addressed to shareholders). To this aim, we create a quality index based on previous literature, analyzing the content of the sustainability information disclosed by Spanish listed companies during the years 2013 to 2015. We find that companies issuing sustainability reports or integrated reports provide higher quality information than companies including their sustainability information within the annual report. We also find that sustainability reports are issued with higher quality than integrated reports. Both findings indicate that companies in Spain are engaged in a dialogue with all stakeholders, not only shareholders. Our results offer insights on the need to improve the framework of the integrated report in order to achieve the objectives of the International Integrated Reporting Council and to get a speed up in the adoption of this new reporting tool.