JORDANS potential tourism development

Following the peace accords with Israel, Jordans potential as a destination increased significantly. Jordan consequently sought advice from various international parties for developing tourism. However, almost identical development plans designed years before by some of the same parties remain unimplemented. This is because major responsibility lies with the government and its personnel policies, taxation rates, micromanagement, and unreliable record keeping. However, beyond these problems are issues having to do with guest\host relations, cultural values, and the legacy of over a half-century of wars and enmity toward those who now compose a large portion of its market—the Israeli tourists. This paper discusses whether tourism in Jordan will be an economic boon or a destabilizing factor.     

School Grants a Bar to Consumer Sovereignty

Is funding by schools a stage towards or an obstacle to payment by parents? Marjorie Seldon, Chairman of FEVER, maintains that, once the finance is controlled by schools, they will not readily agree to its transfer to parent-consumers.     

Reviews

TRANSPORT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

Hepworth, M. and Oucatel, K. 1991: Transport in the Information Age: Wheels and Wires. London: Belhaven Press, £39.00 cloth.

THE SOUTH EAST AND EUROPE.

South East Economic Development Strategy, 1991: Continental Shift: The South East and Europe's Single Market. Stevenage: SEEDS,

£35.00.

DEFENCE CONVERSION.

Fife Regional Council and Fife Enterprise, 1991: A Study of the Fife Defence Industry. Glenrothes: Fife Regional Council, no price stated.

URBAN POLICY IN THE UK AND THE USA IN THE

1990S. Hambleton R. 1991: Another Chance for Cities? Issues for Urban Policy in the 1990s. Papers in Planning Research No 126, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Wales College at Cardiff, PO Box 906, Cardiff CF1 3Y, £6.00 paper.

Nyden, P.W. and Wiewel, W. (eds) 1991: Challenging Uneven Development: An Urban Agenda for the 1990s. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Clavel P. and Wiewel, W. (eds) 1991: Harold Washington and the Neighbourhoods: Progressive City Government in Chicago 1983-1987. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. $16.00 paper.

THE PARTNERSHIP DEBATE: CONTRACT ARRANGEMENTS BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND VOLUNTARY SECTORS.

Gutch, R. 1992: Contracting Lessons from the US. London: NCVO

Publications, £5.00 voluntary organisations, £10.00 others.

THE FAST PROGRAMME.

Cooley, M. (ed) 1989: European Competitiveness in the 21st Century (A contribution to the “FAST”

proposal for an R&D programme on “Human work in advanced technological environments"). Commission of the European Communities. No price stated.     

Beyond rationality

Our most revered models of business processes are highly rational. But is this how business really works? Only in part. Many nonrational considerations are factors in promotions, client relations, or decision making. Managers and educational institutions should be aware of this fact.     

Cross-functional interface and disruption in CRM projects: Is marketing from Venus and information systems from Mars?

Because of the inherently cross-functional nature of customer relationship management, the use of cross-functional teams in CRM project implementations is virtually mandatory to achieve critical marketing and sales objectives. This study examines the effects of functional membership as well as team and individual performance evaluations on project members' perceptions of disruption and cooperation during CRM project implementations. The results show that IS project members are more likely to perceive internal volatility and manifest interfunctional conflict and less likely to perceive interfunctional cooperation than project members from either sales/marketing or general management. We also find that team performance evaluations are negatively associated with disruption and positively associated with cooperation, while individual evaluations are negatively associated with internal volatility.     

Predicting Failure of Savings & Loan Associations

Early-warning systems are intended to provide regulators with identification of problem institutions sooner than is possible with the present system of call reports and periodic on-site examinations. Given an earlier indication of potential problems, resources can be focused on those institutions most in need of monitoring, thus potentially reducing both the number of failures and FSLIC financial assistance in the remaining failures. While some early-warning systems were developed in the mid-1970s for use by commercial bank regulators, very little attention has been focused on developing similar systems for the thrift industry. To address this issue, multiple discriminant analysis was used to develop an early-warning system for savings and loan associations in the Boston district of the Federal Home Loan Bank system. The results suggest that use of this model would have given signals of impending trouble well before the actual failure occurred. Consequently, an early-warning system could provide information to regulators sooner, permitting scarce resources to be allocated more effectively. In addition, earlier intervention could reduce the amount of FSLIC financial assistance required. By intervening earlier, FSLIC may be able to arrest the failure-promoting activities in which the association is engaged.     

The Effects of Disclosure and Analyst Regulations on the Relevance of Analyst Characteristics for Explaining Analyst Forecast Accuracy

We posit and find an effect of disclosure and analyst reporting regulations implemented from 2000 through 2003 (including Regulation Fair Disclosure, the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act and the Global Settlement Act) on the importance of analyst and forecast characteristics for analyst forecast accuracy. Following the enactment of these regulations, more experienced analysts and All‐Star analysts do not maintain their superior forecast accuracy, and analysts employed by large brokerage houses perform worse than other analysts. In addition, we find a decrease in the importance of analyst effort, the number of industries and firms followed, days elapsed since the last forecast, and forecast horizon. While the importance of bold upward forecast revisions does not change, bold downward revisions lose their relevance for forecast accuracy after 2003. Finally, we find an increase in the importance of prior forecast accuracy. We find that the importance of these characteristics varies with the precision of publicly available information. Specifically, the decrease in the importance of most analyst and forecast characteristics and the increase in the importance of prior forecast accuracy are greater when the precision of publicly available information is low. Overall, our results suggest that the positive effects of experience, effort, brokerage house size and All‐Star status on forecast accuracy in the pre‐regulation period were because of the information advantages that these analysts enjoyed (rather than their ability to generate private information). In contrast, our results suggest that prior forecast accuracy is related to analysts’ ability to generate private information.