Palestinian ‘Roadblock Movies’

Many of the Palestinian artists who began to direct films in the 1990s, had grown up under Israeli occupation, mainly in the West Bank, in refugee camps, in Gaza, and matured or worked in this decade of increasing national tension during and between the two intifadas. These filmmakers have found it difficult to create the spaces that previous cinema succeeded in creating in their films. They also found it difficult to deconstruct this space as did previous directors (Michel Khleifi, Elia Suleiman or Rashid Masharawi). As the intifada strengthened and the Israeli occupation became more deeply felt, the entire space seemed to be threatened, narrowed or reduced, and the films found it difficult to encompass the wholeness and unity of the home and the outside, to describe the mundane life within them, and to connect them to past times. Many of them also failed to preserve the ambivalence and heterogeneity that made it possible, in previous films, to create the national story from – and through – individual stories, and to connect the private place to the public one. Since the end of the 1990's, and now, at the beginning of the present decade, it has become difficult for the Palestinian cinema both to create and to deconstruct a whole imaginary map – and to produce from this map a heterogeneous, multi-cultural space. In the films made in the 1990s and 2000s the public space is blocked, the private space is missing or destroyed, and the only place left intact is the border.

In this case, however, the border is not the defining line that might divide, as Tuathail and Dalby phrase it, us from them. It does not part any longer the world into good and evil ⁱ Tuathail & Dalby (note 25) p.1. and does not leave the demonic effects out. On the other hand, the border is not a threshold linking between cultural identities.

The article traces the difficulty the Palestinian films of the 90s face in presenting “visual order of space”, in mapping the Palestinian territory with the aid of the camera or by editing, in clearly distinguishing between the inside and the outside. On the other hand the article analyzes the impossibility, in this situation of an insecure territory, to describe “plurality of space and the multiplicity of possible political constructions of space”, to create maps that put the dispersed pieces together to form a “larger picture and to draw out connections and causalities between them”.

The article also summarizes the strategies recent Palestinian cinema uses in order to overcome these impasses.     

Unintended effects of incentivizing consumers to recommend a favorite brand

Marketers often use incentives such as coupons, rewards or special membership discounts in order to motivate consumers to purchase or recommend a particular brand. This practice is based on the underlying assumption that an increase in incentives will lead to an increase in consumer response – an idea which has been at the core of traditional economic thinking for decades. Some psychologists have claimed, however, that under specific conditions an increase in incentives can reduce (rather than increase) one's willingness to perform the behavior which is being incentivized. If materialized, the possibility that extrinsic incentives may diminish consumer willingness to recommend a favorite brand could have important theoretical and practical consequences in the context of word-of-mouth or buzz marketing. This study tests that possibility in the context of an experiment about Apple computers, a favorite brand among US college students. Participants were asked to recommend the brand to a friend (1) in absence of any monetary reward and (2) for a small monetary incentive. Students who were promised a small monetary reward experienced a decrease in intrinsic motivation and wrote shorter recommendations than those who were not promised any incentives. Data also suggest that the quality of the recommendation may decrease when incentives are offered. The results are discussed in line of their possible theoretical and practical significance.     

Relational Co-ordination and Stigma at Work: How Frontline Employees Compensate for Failures in Public Health Systems

Co-ordinating collective work and communicating a shared understanding of tasks is necessary to accomplishing organizational goals. Stigma could exacerbate co-ordination challenges between public and private organizations by further widening differences in goals and incentives among employees. Using relational co-ordination theory, we explore how stigma can influence employee behaviour in the context of healthcare delivery. We study healthcare professionals and frontline workers involved in the fight against AIDS in India to examine how public health systems fail due to a lack of communication and co-ordination, and that these failures are worsened by stigma. When stigma is present, relationships between employees become strained due to misaligned work routines, lack of information sharing and cooperation failure. Our findings reveal emergent responses from frontline employees that mitigate co-ordination failures through: (1) role adaptation to improve predictability of tasks; (2) social purpose identification to promote a common understanding and engage stigmatized clients; and (3) affective attachment that encourages extra-role behaviours and task ownership. We draw implications for relational co-ordination and stigma, as well as public-private co-ordination in public health systems.     

Corporate Social Performance,Legitimacy, and the Choice of Foreign Partners by State-Controlled Entities in the Global Extractive Industries

We study the outcome of the decision of a state-controlled entity (SCE) to form an international joint venture (IJV) with a foreign partner in the SCE's country. Focusing on the perspective of the host SCE, we propose that in its search for a partner, the SCE will evaluate the sociopolitical legitimacy effect of a candidate partner's corporate social performance (CSP). Thereby, the SCE will consider CSP an important selection criterion because of its legitimacy effect on the selection decision, the SCE, the IJV, and the host state in the eyes of salient local and international stakeholders. Moreover, the legitimacy effect of a candidate partner's CSP will further influence the decision outcome through its interaction with the level of corruption in the candidate partner's home country, the extant sociopolitical legitimacy of the host state, and the number of neighbouring countries of the host country participating in international multi-stakeholder initiatives. We find support for our hypotheses using a novel sample of extractive industries IJVs between SCEs from 48 countries and 203 foreign partners from 22 countries for the period 2000–15.     

Measuring the effect of Kyoto protocol agreement on countries’ environmental efficiency in CO2 emissions: an application of conditional full frontiers

This paper applies the probabilistic approach developed by Daraio and Simar (J Prod Anal 24:93–121, 2005, Advanced robust and nonparametric methods in efficiency analysis. Springer Science, New York, 2007a, J Prod Anal 28:13–32, 2007b) in order to develop conditional and unconditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) models for the measurement of countries’ environmental efficiency levels for a sample of 110 countries in 2007. In order to capture the effect of countries compliance with the Kyoto protocol agreement (KPA) policies, we condition first the years since a country has signed the KPA until 2007 and secondly the obliged percentage level of countries’ emission reductions. Particularly, various DEA models have been applied alongside with bootstrap techniques in order to determine the effect of KPA on countries’ environmental efficiencies. The study illustrates how the recent developments in efficiency analysis and statistical inference can be applied when evaluating environmental performance issues. The results indicate a nonlinear relationship between countries’ obliged percentage levels of emission reductions and their environmental efficiency levels. Finally, a similar nonlinear relationship is also recorded between the duration which a country has signed the KPA and its environmental efficiency levels.     

Forecasting tourist arrivals using origin country macroeconomics

This study utilizes both disaggregated data and macroeconomic indicators in order to examine the importance of the macroeconomic environment of origin countries for analysing destinations’ tourist arrivals. In particular, it is the first study to present strong empirical evidence that both of these features in tandem provide statistically significant information of tourist arrivals in Greece. The forecasting exercises presented in our analysis show that macroeconomic indicators conducive to better forecasts are mainly origin country-specific, thus highlighting the importance of considering the apparent sharp national contrasts among origin countries when investigating domestic tourist arrivals. Given the extent of the dependency of the Greek economy on tourism income and also the perishable nature of the tourist product itself, results have important implications for policymakers in Greece.     

The contribution of marketing innovations on art organization performance: cases from the biggest art organizations in Greece

Marketing innovation approach in art organizations is the only way for them not only to survive in a period of limited public funding but also to expand their cultural mission. This study explores the effects of innovation on economic and cultural performances of nonprofit organizations by analyzing empirical evidence from the seven biggest art organizations in Greece. The findings show that marketing innovations on art organizations have a positive impact on their economic performance but have a limited impact on their cultural performance. Unlike previous studies, the specific marketing innovations that influence economic outcomes are examined, followed by recommendations and limitations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of personality on virtual communications in warfare

Individuals and corporations worldwide are increasing their use of computer‐mediated‐communications (CMC) systems and processes. Such endeavors are shortening lines of communications, yet simultaneously distancing understanding. Winston Churchill once opined that the British and the Americans are two great peoples separated by a common language. Some relate aspects of culture as the source of Churchill's quote. Separating factors may be more engrained than was previously believed or theorized. The authors examined a high‐stress setting in which the trappings of culture disappear leaving only the basic emotional and cognitive survival aspects of personality: the environment of military combat. The study examined the relationship of an individual's ability to function efficiently using virtual communications and processes while under extreme stress. Observing the results of the study's individual‐environment relations raise the question of whether personality is a factor in virtual team efficiency.     

Oligopolies with (Somewhat) Environmentally Conscious Consumers: Market Equilibrium and Regulatory Intervention

We consider a horizontally differentiated duopoly where consumers care about the product's “greenness.” Firms can be asymmetric: they may differ in the product's intrinsic value and may also differ in their chosen level of greenness. We examine the choice of greenness and the implications of various policy interventions. We show that (i) the choices of product greenness are strategic substitutes, (ii) the high‐intrinsic quality firm produces the greener product, (iii) the low‐quality firm's greenness may increase with the cost of its provision or decrease with consumer willingness to pay for it, (iv) a minimum quality standard (MQS) leads the greener firm to lower its environmental quality and can even reduce average quality, (v) greenness is underprovided even if consumers fully internalize the externality, and (v) an MQS can reduce welfare if the greenness of the high‐quality firm exceeds the MQS, even when environmental quality is underprovided. The effects of policy interventions on profits differ qualitatively across polices and firms: A firm that lobbies for one type of intervention may lobby against another similar one, and a firm may lobby for an intervention while its competitor may lobby against it. A subsidy for the development costs of a green product can financially hurt both firms.     

Human resource development of professionals in an emerging economy: the case of the Tanzanian construction industry

The issues pertaining to human resource development (HRD) of professionals1 1 The term ‘professional’ is used in this paper to refer to architects, engineers and quantity surveyors who work in managerial and/or professional roles in construction and construction related firms in the Tanzanian construction industry. in emerging/developing economies have not received sufficient attention in the literature. This is in spite of the strategic importance of the role of competent professionals in economic development. Using the construction industry in Tanzania as a case study, this study provides a review of the extent of the neglect of HRD for professionals in emerging/developing economies and what needs to be done to address the problem. In particular, it explores why there is no systematic integrated industry-wide training programme for professionals in the industry. It reveals that the existing programmes are fragmented and lack overall strategy and continuity, coordination and sustainable funding. The lack of sustainable funding is identified as the main obstacle to both the creation and sustainability of a training programme for professionals. To overcome this problem, the study suggests the establishment of an industry-specific training levy for professionals. But it warns that in an emerging/developing country environment there is the need to ensure that both the training programme and the administration of finance are not derailed by bureaucratic bottlenecks and other constraints, such as corruption. This study is of both organization and public policy relevance and, in additions, attempts to fill the gap (indicated above) in the HRD literature.