Employee perceptions of well-being and organizational wellness offerings: A study of line-level employees in select-service hotels

ABSTRACT

This research assessed line-level employee perceptions of their own well-being and their awareness of wellness benefits offered by their organizations. Completed questionnaires were collected from 187 employees of select-service hotels in the Midwest. Employees had above average levels of well-being with full-time employees having significantly higher levels of well-being than part-time employees. Employees who are aware of available wellness programs had higher levels of well-being than those who are not aware of these programs. The findings suggest the need for organizations and managers to implement and communicate wellness program offerings to all employees.     

Hospitality and tourism student and alumni perspectives: promotion expectations,academic and experience adjustments,and career growth

Preparing qualified graduates for the tourism and hospitality industry who will stay and achieve promotional success is paramount. The objectives of this research project were to determine promotional advancement expectations and strategies to improve promotional opportunities. Two separate questionnaires, with both open and close-ended questions, were sent to upper classmen/women in hospitality and tourism programs and alumni of the same programs. In total, 717 (409 students and 308 alumni) completed the questionnaires. Chi-square tests were run to determine differences between student and alumni responses. To assist in analysis of open-ended responses, Atlas.ti was used. There was a statistically significant difference between students and alumni responses in regards to promotional expectations; students expected it to take a significantly longer time to receive a promotion to supervisor or manager than alumni. Overall, students and alumni indicated strategies such as more real-world-focused courses with hands-on experiences.     

Stock of downstream complementary assets as a catalyst for product innovation during technological change in the U.S. machine tool industry

Research summary : We investigate the effect of incumbents' stock of downstream complementary assets on their product innovation during a disruptive technological change. We theorize that a firm's stock of downstream complementary assets, by providing critical information about shifting demand conditions, will play a catalytic role in firm adaptation during such a change. Using the advent of disruptive computer numerical control machine tools in the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s as the context, we find that firms with greater stocks of downstream complementary assets are likely to be product innovation leaders during such a change. Managerial summary : Disruptive changes are challenging firms across industries. We concentrate on the U.S. machine tool industry during the 1970s and 1980s when Japanese manufacturers with disruptive computer numerical control systems challenged the U.S. manufacturers. We find that, under the threat of disruption, the greater the stock of downstream complementary assets a U.S. machine tool manufacturer has, the more likely it is to be the product innovation leader with the disruptive technology. Our findings provide novel insights for managers in companies that face disruptive changes and can help them avoid the consequences of such changes as predicted by prior research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TOWARD BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND EMPIRICAL REALITY

Introductory (i.e. first year) undergraduate learners often perceive economics to be remote from reality and overly theoretical, leading to a lack of motivation and enthusiasm to study economics. A general survey of curriculum practice reveals that lecture materials and the pedagogic approach to teaching introductory economics often do not place the current “mainstream” economic theory into its philosophical context. The result being that the learners are unable to bridge the gap between abstract economic theory and empirical reality. This paper argues that research into effective teaching and learning should focus not only on learner characteristics but also on curriculum content and its philosophical underpinnings, in order to research why students hold these negative perceptions. The paper recommends that introductory undergraduate teaching needs to engage in a critical examination, with the learner, of the philosophical underpinnings of “mainstream” economic theory and to introduce debates about the implications of these into the curriculum. This would create exciting new opportunities for teachers and learners to explore the connections between economic theory and social science in general and should come a long way in changing the negative perceptions of introductory undergraduate economics.     

Subprime Lending and Real Estate Prices

This article establishes a theoretical and empirical link between the use of aggressive mortgage lending instruments, such as interest‐only, negative‐amortization or subprime mortgages, and the underlying house prices. Such instruments, which come into existence through innovation or financial deregulation, allow more borrowing than otherwise would occur in previously affordability‐constrained markets. Within the context of a model with an endogenous rent‐buy decision, we demonstrate that the supply of aggressive lending instruments temporarily increases the asset prices in the underlying market because agents find it more attractive to own or because their borrowing constraint is relaxed, or both. This result implies that the availability of aggressive mortgage lending instruments magnifies the real estate cycle and the effects of fundamental demand shocks. We empirically confirm the predictions of the model using recent subprime origination experience. In particular, we find that regions that receive a high concentration of aggressive lending instruments experience larger price increases and subsequent declines than areas with low concentration of such instruments. This result holds in the presence of various controls and instrumental variables.     

‘Devolution’ of transport powers to Local Government: Impacts of the 2004 Traffic Management Act in England

The concept of ‘Devolution’—the transfer of powers away from the Central Government to more local bodies of Government, has been used across many different areas of policy and by many different national governments. This paper examines the devolution of transport powers to the existing Local Traffic Authorities in England via the 2004 Traffic Management Act. The paper first presents a summary of how several different nations have undertaken this process of devolving transport powers and responsibilities to either new or existing bodies. It then presents research from an electronic survey concerning how English Local Traffic Aut`horities are choosing to use some of the new powers available to them and their opinion on complementary areas of transport policy. Research is also presented from structured telephone interviews, concerning how individual Local Authorities perceive the efficacy and equity of the new legislation. Overall, the results show that only some of these new powers are likely to be used by English Local Authorities, with limited variation in how different types of LTA are choosing to implement these new powers. The structured telephone interviews provided some evidence that rural Authorities in particular are more dissatisfied with the legislation and consider some of the measures unhelpful. The results provide some insights on the formulation of devolved policy applicable to existing Local Government bodies and the varying benefits that can be perceived to apply to different types of Local Authority. Conclusions are drawn on some of the practical difficulties arising from the English experience, and lessons of relevance are drawn for other nations considering a similar devolution of transport powers.     

Impact of standards adoption on healthcare transaction performance: The case of HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a standard for the healthcare industry mandating, in part, use of the EDI X12 protocol set for data exchanges among industry members. The motivation underlying this change was the view that lack of a standard format for healthcare data created significant inefficiencies, resulting in increased costs within the industry. With regulators’ supposition that the standard would improve data exchange performance, we set out to determine the actual performance implications of HIPAA.Using data on transactions occurring over 106 months from 1998 to 2004, we study the impact of the HIPAA standardization requirement on transaction performance in the form of transaction delivery time and transaction quality measured as percentage errors. Performance is expected to deteriorate immediately following HIPAA compliance, due to system disruption, before a longer-term trend toward improved performance. Transaction performance immediately following HIPAA compliance shows deterioration in transaction delivery time, as expected, but a surprising improvement in transaction quality. The longer-term trends associated with HIPAA compliance for both transaction quality and transaction delivery time show that both are trending toward improvement. However, when we compare performance three, six, and 12 months before and after HIPAA compliance, we find that neither delivery time nor quality has improved. The implications for practice and theory are discussed.     

Lone Mothers: What is to be done?

This Dialogue presents the views of four authors, from the US, the UK, and Norway, on the best policies to help lone mothers. Lone mothers face an inevitable dilemma in allocating their time between earning income and caring for their children. The low-earning capacity of women in an unequal labor market exacerbates the problem, causing material hardship for many lone mothers and their families. The policy solutions proposed lie along a spectrum, ranging from those that seek to enable all lone mothers to take employment to those that aim to let mothers choose whether to take employment or care for their children themselves. Other policies discussed concern ways to value and support caregiving, improve the low-wage labor market for women, and provide a set of income supports that would both boost income and provide time to care for children.     

The auditor’s strategy selection for negotiation with management: Flexibility of initial accounting position and nature of the relationship

The audit partner is usually the first mover in a negotiation with client management and has an intended strategy set going into such a negotiation. Negotiation strategies that make up the set may be integrative (both parties can gain or at least not lose) and distributive (there is a winner and a loser). We focus on five strategies: two integrative (expanding the agenda or problem solving) and three distributive (contending, conceding or compromising) and measure the audit partner’s intent to use these strategies’ associated tactics. We report the results of an audit negotiation experiment in which 140 highly experienced audit partners planned a negotiation in response to a case scenario that incorporated two key theoretical variables: the flexibility of the client initial accounting position and the nature of the prior relationship between the auditor and client management. In addition to intended tactics, we also examine these two variables’ effects on commitment to the goal of reducing net income. Our results indicate that in contrast to findings in the generic negotiation literature that show negotiators have a preference for distributive tactics and have difficulty employing integrative ones, our audit partners generally favored the use of integrative tactics over distributive ones when entering negotiations, irrespective of circumstance. However, the two theorized variables led to particular strategic choices when distributive tactics were intended; for example, when the audit partner perceived he or she was facing a client management that was inflexible in its initial accounting position, the partner was more likely to use contending tactics and less likely to use conceding and compromising tactics. Finally, we discuss implications of these results for practice and research.     

Electronic Marketing Communications: An Evolving Environment,but Similar Story Regarding the Perception of Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail and Postal Direct Mail

The internet is still a relatively new mass communication tool for advertisers and marketers. When weighing the potential benefits of electronic techniques against the financial investment, spam seems particularly attractive to marketers for either for-profit or non-profit objectives. Since it is unlikely that marketers will decrease their efforts related to spam and postal direct mail as a form of communicating to mass consumers, it is important to track consumer attitudes so that audiences are not subjected to the backlash predicted by psychological reactance. The results of this study found that spam is more irritating than postal direct mail at both T₁ (2004) and T₂ (2006), and participants in T₂ found both direct marketing communication methods more intrusive than those in T₁.