Does hospitality diversity education make a difference in undergraduate students’ emotional intelligence

Soft skills are typically referred to as the attributes exhibited or contained by an individual that display his/her ability to interact with others. Two types of soft skills that are often discussed within the hospitality industry are diversity awareness and emotional intelligence. Diversity may be explained or defined as a state of unlikeness, the conditions of being different, and all things that make us different. Areas where differences may exist include race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political affiliation and emotional reaction. Emotional intelligence (EI) has been defined as the ability to perceive, understand, regulate, and harness emotions in the self and others. How one deals with emotion is one characteristic that varies from culture to culture. Research has shown that EI may be a contributing factor in a moment of truth being considered a failure or success. The purpose of this study was to examine if undergraduate student EI scores change after completing a diversity issues course. Students completed the Assessing Emotions Scale on the first class day. At the conclusion of the 15-week course covering approximately 20 diversity issues concepts students completed the same EI assessment. Paired sampled t-testing was conducted to determine whether mean differences existed when comparing post and pre-course scores. Results of this study suggest that certain components of EI are significantly changed after taking the diversity issues course.     

Workplace isolation: salespeople and supervisors in USA

Virtual work is becoming the norm in sales organizations because it is cost effective for the firm and can benefit customers and salespeople. However, along with these benefits, virtual work brings new challenges to organizations. One critical issue is workplace isolation (WI). This study uses responses from a sample of 346 salespeoples in the pharmaceutical field to test a model that investigates the relationships among WI, self-efficacy, leadership style, extra-role performance (ERP), satisfaction with the supervisor, and turnover intentions. Salespersons perception of managers as considerate leaders are associated with lower WI levels. Salespeople with higher levels of self-efficacy are less likely to believe that they are isolated from the company and their colleagues. WI, in turn, is significantly related to satisfaction with the supervision and ERP. Managerial implications and future research directions are presented.     

Reasonable and Risk‐Based? Replacing NFIP Generally Subsidized Rates with a Means‐Tested Subsidy

The National Flood Insurance Program was created to seek two often conflicting goals: (i) shifting risks from federal taxpayers to those who choose to live in flood plains and (ii) ensuring flood insurance is available to everyone at “reasonable” rates. Efforts to accomplish the second goal currently take the form of subsidies based on location and the date a home was constructed. The resulting revenue from subsidized insurance premiums is not sufficient to cover the true cost of flood insurance, and federal taxpayers have paid the difference: $30 billion to date. Based on a detailed survey of households in the high‐risk flood zones of New York City (NYC), we find that replacing existing premium subsidies with risk‐based prices and a subsidy for low‐income housing‐burdened households could better meet both goals by ensuring low‐income individuals have access to affordable flood insurance while still saving the federal taxpayer up to $183 million per year in NYC alone.     

Volunteering time decisions: a multi‐factor experimental study

Non‐profit organizations often seek volunteers to help staff a fundraising event. In the present research, an experimental study assessed volunteering time decisions for a fundraising event following manipulations of opportunity cost valence, opportunity cost avoidability and question order involving donating time and donating money. Opportunity costs represent foregone alternatives sacrificed (e.g. working) when engaging in an activity (e.g. volunteering), with valence of the opportunity cost indicating the appeal (positive or negative) of the foregone alternative and avoidability of the opportunity cost suggesting how easy it would be to forgo the alternative. Prospective donors are often asked to consider both volunteering time and contributing money, and these two questions posed to individuals can be varied in terms of order. The results of the experiment revealed that individuals intended to volunteer the most time when an opportunity cost was negative and avoidable. The lowest time donation intentions occurred when an opportunity cost was positive and less avoidable with individuals also being asked about donating money prior to being asked to donate time. The results highlighted the importance to non‐profit firms of considering opportunity costs potential volunteers face and suggested care in structuring the order of questions involving time and money posed to those individuals. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Contract length heterogeneity and the persistence of monetary shocks in a dynamic generalized Taylor economy

We develop the generalized Taylor economy (GTE) in which there are many sectors with overlapping contracts of different lengths. In economies with the same average contract length, monetary shocks will be more persistent when longer contracts are present. Using the Bils–Klenow distribution of contract lengths, we find that the corresponding GTE tracks the U.S. data well. When we choose a GTE with the same distribution of completed contract lengths as the Calvo, the economies behave in a similar manner.     

How do bankruptcy laws affect entrepreneurship development around the world?

How do bankruptcy laws as formal institutions affect entrepreneurship development around the world? Do entrepreneur-friendly bankruptcy laws encourage more entrepreneurship development at a societal level? We posit that if bankrupt entrepreneurs are excessively punished for failure, they may give up potentially high-return but inherently high-risk opportunities to start new businesses. Amassing a cross-country database from 29 countries spanning 19 years (1990-2008), we find that lenient, entrepreneur-friendly bankruptcy laws are significantly correlated with the level of entrepreneurship development as measured by the rate of new firm entry.     

If the Banks are Doing So Well,Why Can't I Get a Loan? Regulatory Constraints to Financial Inclusion in Indonesia

Indonesia's financial sector has two paradoxes: (i) Indonesia has been a global leader in microfinance for the past 25 years, but access to microfinance services is declining; and (ii) Indonesia's commercial banks are liquid, solvent, and profitable, and the Indonesian economy has been doing well over the past decade, but small and medium enterprises are facing a credit crunch. Although Indonesia is underbanked, most commercial banks have been unresponsive to unmet effective demand. The behavior of banks has been in their own short‐term best interests, primarily because of the unintended consequences of Indonesia's financial sector reregulation after the East Asian crisis and contradictory monetary policies, which have produced a prudentially sound but inefficient, narrow, and homogenized banking oligopoly. Indonesia should not respond to financial exclusion by artificially pumping out and administratively allocating more credit. Instead, it should promulgate smart regulation so that banks maintain their sound risk management without pursuing noncompetitive and noninclusive business practices.