Nature conservation for future sustainable shorelines: Lessons from seeking to involve the public

The soft coastline of eastern England is dynamic, with much of it subject to the risk of erosion or flooding. A number of internationally important coastal nature conservation sites are under threat. This paper explores the character and reasoning behind changing coastal management policies and governance practices in England. It reveals how Natural England is tackling these changes, notably with regard to establishing reconstituted nature conservation sites and re-designed coastlines. Such an approach requires the close involvement of policy leaders, agency officers, local maritime authorities and local residents. This paper explains how participatory processes play a critical role in the design of new coastlines that are ecologically and geomorphologically sustainable yet enable local communities to survive and flourish. A case study involving a visioning exercise at Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk, UK, highlights the many practical difficulties around planning for the uncertain future of internationally important nature conservation sites, and local economies and communities. Future moves toward sustainable coastal alignments will have to involve a wide mix of public and civic bodies, as well as local communities, and will be underpinned by risk-based planning and well-researched adaptation and relocation arrangements.     

Market Incentives for Safe Foods: An Examination of Shareholder Losses from Meat and Poultry Recalls

Meat and poultry recalls, while voluntary, are carried out under governmental oversight. If firms have financial incentives to avoid being implicated in a recall situation, governmental involvement in recalls may cause firms to internalize social costs when making investment decisions concerning food safety controls. To examine these incentives, we analyze federally supervised meat and poultry recalls from 1982 to 1998 within an event study. Results show significant shareholder losses when publicly traded food companies are implicated in a recall involving serious food safety hazards. We find no evidence that the stock market reacts negatively when recalls involve less severe hazards.     

Shut the fridge door! HRM alignment,job redesign and energy performance

Anchored within the strategic HRM and alignment literature, and drawing on efficiency and legitimacy perspectives of organisational behaviour, we investigated a HRM intervention targeted at energy reduction goals in a large multinational retailer. The HRM intervention was focused on embedding the environmental and economic performance goals of the firm within the workplace through redesigning the job so that energy tasks were aligned with training and performance management systems, as well as organisational performance goals. Using a randomised control trial design, we tracked changes in energy behaviours and energy consumption in 769 retail stores (685 in the intervention condition, 84 in the control condition). The findings provide evidence that changing the alignment of HRM practices can influence both worker behaviour and organisational outcomes, including environmental outcomes. This work contributes to debates concerning the impact of HRM alignment on both the work and organisational performance context.     

In Vino ‘No’ Veritas: impacts of fraud on wine imports in China

China is one of the largest wine importing countries in the world and is poised for continued import growth in the future. Increased wine purchases throughout China have given rise to persistent fraud where fake wines are packaged and sold with counterfeit contents and labels. For exporting countries like France, counterfeit wines displace market share, damage foreign brand reputation, and cause distrust in consumers who are aware of counterfeiting problems throughout the country. We examine the impact of fraudulent wine events (as measured by negative media reports) on Chinese wine demand differentiated by supplying country. We employ the Rotterdam demand system and a switching regression procedure to estimate import demand and compare results across different media variable specifications. Results consistently show that negative reports disproportionately affect French wine regardless of how the media variable is specified. This is not surprising because most fraudulent events involve French wine counterfeits.     

Brexit: How Will UK Agriculture Fare?

There is little doubt that Brexit would have significant implications for UK agriculture, a sector with strong trade links to the EU and strong reliance on CAP income support. This article reports preliminary results from employing a Computable General Equilibrium Model, a Partial Equilibrium Model and Farm Level Models to explore selected trade and domestic policy scenarios post‐Brexit. These allow for the estimation of changes in producer prices, production and farm incomes against a baseline scenario of continued EU membership. Under a Free Trade Agreement with the EU, agricultural impacts are relatively modest. By contrast, unilateral removal of import tariffs has significant negative impacts on prices, production and incomes. Adoption of the EU's WTO tariff schedule for all imports favours net importers (e.g. dairy) and harms net exporters (e.g. sheep). Given the strong dependence of most UK farms on direct payments, their removal worsens negative impacts of new trade arrangements and offsets positive impacts. Impacts vary across different types and sizes of farm, but also regionally. However, the period of adjustment to new trade and domestic policy conditions may prove very challenging for a large number of farm businesses.     

Alternative Approaches to Compensation and Producer Rights

When policies are changed, it is not uncommon for losers to be compensated. Economic theory and quantitative analysis are useful in determining the efficiency gains/losses associated with a policy change, but are little help in deciding what the approach to compensation should be. The amount of compensation varies, depending on, in part, the political clout of the parties being negatively affected by a policy change—compensation is what politicians and the sector demanding compensation can agree on. We formulate four approaches to producer compensation within the context of the Ontario Tobacco Transition Program, where producers would have suffered losses in the absence of compensation. The approaches range from providing zero compensation to providing compensation based on the entire value of the tobacco quota. The Canadian government chose the latter and compensated producers for the termination of the tobacco quota program based on an approach that far exceeded other possible compensation approaches.     

Changes in tourists’ perception of well-being based on their use of emotion regulation strategies during vacation

ABSTRACT

Based on the theoretical foundation of emotion regulation, this exploratory study aimed to examine changes in tourists’ perceived well-being and to determine whether these changes were due to use of emotion regulation strategies (ERSs) during their vacation. This study used travel diaries to record tourists’ use of ERSs on a daily basis, and also measured tourists’ perceived well-being one day before and after their vacation. Results indicated that tourists had significantly higher perceptions of well-being after vacation, and those who used ERSs were more likely to indicate a higher sense of well-being after vacation. The results provide new insight into which aspects of tourists’ subjective and psychological well-being can be boosted by taking vacations and how these aspects may be enhanced by using different ERSs.     

“He just didn’t seem to understand the banter”: Bullying or simply establishing social cohesion?

Within the professional kitchen bullying is reported as widespread, aggressive and related to a significant retention problem. This research explores negative behaviour in professional kitchens and its impact on organisational commitment. A mixed methods approach is used employing a survey among chefs followed by semi-structured interviews. An exploratory factor analysis examines the underlying constructs of bullying and job satisfaction and data are analysed through Partial Least Squares. Our research highlights that bullying behaviour is experienced most by younger, more junior chefs. However verbal bullying, the form most strongly reported, has no effect on either satisfaction or commitment. Emergent themes of communication and inclusion illustrate bullying behaviour to be a cohesive aspect of kitchen culture. Our findings suggest behavioural impacts, rather than bullying characteristics, must be considered within their context in order to establish whether or not they are actually damaging to an industry.     

Understanding the leadership perceptions of staff in China's hotel industry: Integrating the macro- and micro-aspects of leadership contexts

The objective of this paper is to understand the leadership perceptions of staff in China's hotel industry. This study integrates the macro- and micro-aspects of leadership contexts by identifying the contextual variables that affect leadership perceptions. In leadership research, industry setting, the hierarchical levels of an organization, and national culture are recognized as the contextual constraints that affect leadership perceptions, and these constraints were used in this empirical study. Four factors emerged from the factor analysis of a survey study: professionalism; integrity; masculinity or yang; and femininity or yin. A key finding indicates that both the industry setting and the hierarchical levels of an organization affect professionalism. Implications for the training and development of future international hospitality leaders and local staff are considered.