Cultural Heritage Assets in China as Sustainable Tourism Products: Case Studies of the Hutongs and the Huanghua Section of the Great Wall

Due to its rich stock of heritage assets, extraordinary pace of market liberalisation, and its political administration, the People’s Republic of China is at a crossroads in terms of the management of its heritage assets. In order to better understand the threats and opportunities that market liberalisation may pose for cultural heritage assets as future tourism products, this study examines two examples in the Beijing municipality; the Hutongs and the section of the Great Wall at Huanghua. These case studies are used to investigate the coordination of policy to balance modernisation and conservation of heritage assets in Beijing, and place it against a general model of stakeholder roles that can drive the sustainable use of heritage assets. Teasing out the nature of these roles has identified where tourism development aids or detracts from existing heritage conservation policies. Without better coordination of roles in policy implementation, the sustainability of many heritage assets as future tourism products is in question.     

The dynamic adjustment of environment, strategy, structure, and resources on firm performance

Under the uncertainty of external environment, how do the firms exploit resources, adjust organizational structures, and adopted proper strategies to gain the better performance is an important issue. Many theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Structure-conduct-performance model suggest that industry structure influences the firm behavior and determines the performance of individual firms and of the industry as a whole. Strategy-structure-performance model suggest that strategy must dictate organizational structure, which in turn influences performance. The environmental perspective considers external environments. Resource-Based View suggests that management must focus on the values of resources to generate sustained competitive advantages and to improve performance. Dynamic adjustment among environment, strategy, structure, and resources can become primary causes of the firm performance. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the gaps between different theories and to complement the existing theories. This paper confirmed the measurement of the constructs first and competing models were used to examine dynamic adjustment among constructs and the relationships to firm performance. The results demonstrated that most of the relationships among constructs were supported and support the dynamic adjustment of the constructs. When facing uncertain environments, firms tend to use competition strategies as well as cooperation strategies; firms tend to formalize organizational structures and to amass resources. Firms which conduct cooperation strategies and possess more resources will attain better performance levels than those that do not. As to the theoretical models, the structure-conduct-performance model and the environmental perspective were supported. Practitioners should recognize the importance of the industrial and environmental factors.     

Regulation FD and analysts’ vs. investors’ weightings of the cash components of earnings

This paper investigates whether investors’ bias in processing the information contained in the cash components of annual earnings has been reduced, and whether the difference in bias between financial analysts and investors has decreased subsequent to Regulation Fair Disclosure (hereafter, Reg FD). We compare analysts’ and investors’ weightings of the three cash flow components of earnings, defined by Dechow, Richardson, and Sloan (2008), from 1985 to 2008, using historical weightings as benchmarks. Our results show that, in the post Reg FD period, the magnitude of investors’ (analysts’) mis-weightings has decreased (increased), and the differences between analysts’ and investors’ mis-weightings have become smaller. Overall, these results suggest that financial analysts’ information advantages over investors declined after Reg FD took effect, and that investors consequently are less biased in assessing the persistence of the cash flow components of earnings following the implementation of Reg FD.     

Currency barrier option pricing with mean reversion

This article develops a barrier option pricing model in which the exchange rate follows a mean‐reverting lognormal process. The corresponding closed‐form solutions for the barrier options with time‐dependent barriers are derived. The numerical results show that barrier option values and the corresponding hedge parameters under the proposed model are different from those based on the Black‐Scholes model. For an up‐and‐out call, the mean‐reverting process keeps the exchange rate in a small range around the mean level. When the mean level is below the barrier but above the strike price, the risk of the call to be knocked out is reduced and its option value is enhanced compared with the value under the Black‐Scholes model. The parameters of the mean‐reverting lognormal process therefore have a material impact on the valuation of currency barrier options and their hedge parameters. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:939–958, 2006     

Cystadenoma of the seminal vesicle: US and CT findings

Ultrasonographic (US) and computed tomographic (CT) features of a cystadenoma of the seminal vesicle are presented.     

OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance: The role of complexity and coupling

Today, manufacturing firms encounter pressure from multiple stakeholders to manage occupational health and safety issues properly, systematically and transparently. While manufacturing firms commonly use internally developed Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, there is growing pressure to adopt externally certified system such as OHSAS 18001. However, there are conflicting views and little empirical evidence that examines the linkage between OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance. Hence, this paper examines the impact of OHSAS 18001 on operational performance through three theoretical lenses: Institutional Theory, Normal Accident Theory, and High Reliability Theory. We also investigate how complexity and coupling moderate the relationship between OHSAS 18001 and operational performance. Based on a sample of 211 U.S. listed manufacturing firms with OHSAS 18001 certification, we find that certification leads to significant increases in abnormal performance on safety, sales growth, labor productivity, and profitability and that these benefits increase as complexity and coupling increase.     

A firm level perspective on migration: the role of extra-EU workers in Italian manufacturing

A production-theory approach to migration is adopted in this paper to address the role of migrant workers from extra-EU countries in Italian manufacturing firms. The adoption of flexible functional forms to model firm-level technology lets us directly derive different measures of elasticity from the coefficients of the estimated production and cost functions. The use of foreign labour is shown to affect the industry composition in favour of low skill intensive sectors and the estimated cross demand elasticities confirm the complementarity between migrant and native workers found in previous studies. However, the two labour inputs prove to be substitutes in terms of the Morishima elasticity of substitution: in general, firms tend to increase the foreign labour intensity of production in response to a decline in migrants’ wage, while the migrant to domestic labour ratio responds to changes in the domestic workers’ wage only for firms in low skill intensive sectors.     

The HR competency requirements for strategic and functional HR practitioners

HR competency research has predominantly focused on identifying generic HR competencies for HR practitioners using a universalist approach. This approach has led to the distinction between strategic and functional HR competencies, and a belief that the former is superior to the latter for successful performance in the HR domain. However, little attention has been paid to the interrelationships between strategic and functional HR competency dimensions, and their perceived relevance to strategic and functional HR roles. Drawing on a situationalist perspective and using a mixed-method approach, seven HR competency concepts are identified and examined for their perceived relative importance to strategic and functional HR roles. The findings indicate that Business Awareness competencies are important differentiators between strategic and functional HR roles, whereas Leadership and Relationship Building and Self-Belief and Social Factors are generic to all HR practitioners. The findings also indicate that there is a wider range of HR attributes required for HR job success than those espoused in the HR literature. Theoretical implications and recommendations on selection and development programmes for HR practitioners are also discussed.     

Uncertainty representation and risk management for direct segmented marketing

ABSTRACT

Mining for truly responsive customers has become an integral part of customer portfolio management, and, combined with operational tactics to reach these customers, requires an integrated approach to meeting customer needs that often involves the application of concepts from traditionally distinct fields: marketing, statistics, and operations research. This article brings such concepts together to address customer value and revenue maximisation as well as risk minimisation for direct marketing decision-making problems under uncertainty. We focus on customer lift optimisation given the uncertainty associated with lift estimation models, and develop risk management and operational tools for the multiple treatment (recommendation) problem using stochastic and robust optimisation techniques. Results from numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the effect of incorporating uncertainty on the performance of recommendation models.     

Land use scenario development as a tool for watershed management within the Rio Mannu Basin

The Rio Mannu River Basin (Sardinia, Italy) is undergoing a process of agricultural intensification. Like many Mediterranean areas, this basin is characterized by water shortages and diffuse pollution from agricultural sources. Hence the objective of this study was to develop possible land use and land management scenarios that could constitute an alternative to the current watershed management. Several land use and land management scenarios were formulated and analyzed with local stakeholders, and two were selected and simulated as realistic in consideration of the socio-economical aspects of the study area. Scenario 1 involves agricultural practices that include a reduction in fertilizer use to meet the Water Framework Directive requirements for “good” status of water bodies. Scenario 2 introduces rapeseed cultivation, replacing durum wheat in a small area, to investigate the impact of biofuel plant cultivation on water quality. Each option was assessed by considering the effects on water quality, crop yields and economic benefits. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was applied to simulate hydrological processes and evaluate current and future nutrient loads. This model requires adequate streamflow data for calibration and validation. However, as is the case for many Mediterranean basins, insufficient data were available. Therefore, a methodology was developed and tested to calibrate hydrological processes based on the transposition of a parameter set from a gauged catchment located in the same region. This study suggests that a sound use of fertilizers could substantially reduce the amount of nutrients flowing into surface waters, although the effects of such a policy on crop yield and farm income would be negative in some cases. Moreover, the results clearly predict that the replacement of durum wheat with rapeseed (a biofuel crop), could offer a margin of profit, but would have a negative impact on water quality due to increased nutrient losses. Consequently, this option is unsuitable for this area. Furthermore, it can be inferred from these results that the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources may have a negative impact on the objectives of the EU Water Framework Directive. Clearly, this process needs to be regulated, taking into account environmental and socio-economical aspects.