Towards Sustainable Tourism Development and Planning in New Zealand: The Public Sector Response Revisited

This paper reports the findings of a monitoring survey of the extent to which principles of sustainability embodied in New Zealand's Resource Management Act have been addressed by public-sector planners dealing with tourism. The survey extends the earlier research by Dymond (1997) and Page and Thorn (1997) on public-sector planning responses to tourism and sustainability in New Zealand. The study shows that many of the issues raised by these authors have not been addressed, and that the scale and pace of change in tourism is such that planners have seen an escalation of resource consent applications.     

STRATEGIC INVENTORY OPTIMIZATION

A company's inventory metrics are often viewed as critical indicators of its supply chain performance although inventory costs are only a fraction of total supply chain costs comprised of supplier, manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing costs, as well as inventory costs. Moreover, inventories across the supply chain are dependent on acquisition and distribution decisions. We discuss how simulation and optimization models can be combined to integrate analysis of inventory and supply chain network design decisions in performing a total cost analysis. An application of the models to plans for distributing retail products to an expanding network of stores is reviewed.     

Scoping the Extent of Tourist Road Safety: Motor Vehicle Transport Accidents in New Zealand 1982-1996

There is a growing interest in tourism safety within the travel medicine and safety management literature. From this body of research, motor vehicle traffic accidents (MVTA) are identified as a leading cause of tourist morbidity and mortality. There is, however, a dearth of tourist road safety literature where the tourism context is taken into account. This paper examines the extent of overseas visitor MVTA in New Zealand, based on data collected by the New Zealand Health Information Service for the 15-year period 1982–1996. Some 1604 MVTA cases were recorded in the NZHIS database for non-New Zealand residents, representing 27.4% of all non-resident injuries resulting in hospitalisation during the period of the study. The majority of these incidents involved collisions between vehicles, with 1121 (70% of MVTA cases) involving a car. Highest counts of MVTA were found for males and females in the 20–39 years age range. Largest proportions of MVTA were observed for the Auckland, Otago and Southland regions, although highest incidence rates (based on visitor numbers in each region for the year 1995/6) were found for the Taranaki, Northland, Marlborough, Hawkes Bay and Southland regions. The paper discusses possible reasons for patterns and trends in the MVTA data, drawing on comparisons with existing international studies from the travel medicine and safety management literature.     

Entrepôt Trade and Smuggling in West Africa: Benin,Togo and Nigeria

Official trade statistics indicate very little intra‐African trade, but this is often because of the prevalence of unrecorded trade, particularly smuggling. This paper explores smuggling from Benin and Togo into Nigeria. Nigeria has very high import tariffs and bans on certain products. Togo and Benin have deliberately maintained low import barriers to facilitate an Entrepôt role vis‐à‐vis Nigeria and land‐locked Sahelian countries. Togo competes at a geographic disadvantage relative to Benin for access to the Nigerian market and compensates with lower transit taxes. The volume and composition of cross‐border trade is analysed using data obtained from Benin and Togo customs authorities, as well as interviews with traders and customs officials in both countries. Benin and to a lesser extent Togo are the origin of a very large volume of transshipment of precisely those products which are heavily protected in Nigeria, such as used cars, cloth and rice. It is common knowledge in Benin and Togo that these imports, although declared for domestic consumption or transit to other countries, are in fact overwhelmingly intended for Nigeria. Smuggling is a major source of income and employment in Benin and Togo, but provides a fragile and unreliable foundation for economic development.     

Introduction: service work and its implications for HRM

This article draws on our four case studies to examine the nature of the relationships between ABB and its Canadian subsidiaries. Starting from a critical review of the literature, it develops a framework that is sensitive to three levels of analysis: the factors that shape the parent corporation's strategies, the characteristics of the host countries in which the MNC operates and the characteristics of the local subsidiaries themselves. The empirical material illustrates how innovation is generated by a two-way process, in which the initiative of corporate leaders challenges the ‘interpretation’ of local actors. In doing so, we point to a number of key omissions in the influential attempt by Bartlett and Ghoshal to use ABB to develop a managerial theory of the firm. This research also leads to broader considerations regarding the interface between markets and organizations. As distinct from the orthodox view, a transnational corporation may be conceived as a mediator between the market and a local subsidiary. In many ways, the global corporation channels and mediates the impact of external market forces on internal organizational actors, through a process involving the exercise of politics and power. The article has significant implications for decision making on human resource management. In particular it stresses that local managers, local unions, and employees can think and act strategically only in as far as they properly assess the limits of their respective sphere of organizational autonomy within the corporation.     

To Launch or Not to Launch: An Empirical Estimate of New Food Product Success Rate

New product introduction is one of the most important activities for a company’s growth. It is generally accepted that new product introductions are essential to the health of food companies. Yet, many believe that most new products fail, therefore discouraging companies to introduce some new products. However, most of the estimates suggesting high failure rates are either anecdotal or qualitative. This article provides a quantitative approach to measuring new product success rates for food products and to show the relationship between the success of new product and entry strategies. This article uses a quantitative approach to measuring product success/failure exclusively for food products. The authors contend that failure rates for food products are not nearly as low, and success rates much higher than it was previously established in the literature and perceived by the industry professionals. There was a significant variability of success rates between various food groups ranging from 58% for both fruit and vegetables and desserts and ice-cream categories to 88% for baby food. Success rates also varied among the different introductory strategies of the new food products, ranging from 50% for new packaging to 75% for re-launch strategies.

Academics and practitioners usually quote very low success rates for new products based on subjective and/or strictly qualitative information. This empirical quantitative research shows that success rates for food products are much higher than previously reported. This should encourage greater use of new products to grow sales and profits. The previously reported low success rate may have led to the reluctance to introduce new products and therefore set many of the legacy food companies in their current poor financial condition.     

Options for Electricity Transmission Regulation in Australia

The pricing of access to electricity transmission networks in Australia is currently under review. Several options have been proposed including those based on nodal pricing and the assignment of transmission rights contracts. As most of the marginal costs of transmission are recovered through wholesale electricity prices we focus on the key issue of regulation and investment incentives. We find that current options are unlikely to be adequate in terms of encouraging socially optimal levels and timing of new transmission investment. As an alternative, we propose a regulatory scheme, based on a related idea by Sappington and Sibley that can overcome this problem. Our scheme can potentially generate first best results and is readily applicable given the current institutional structure of electricity markets in Australia.