Exploring Critical Factors of Macau's Heritage Tourism: What Heritage Tourists are Looking for when Visiting the City's Iconic Heritage Sites

Although Macau is widely stigmatized as a gambling paradise, its colonial past has left the city with a wealth of heritage and cultural attractions that can be converted into priceless tourism resources. Macau's status as world heritage city further creates opportunities for the city to develop its heritage tourism business. This requires Macau to understand heritage tourists whose needs and wants may vary from ordinary travelers. A review of the literature, however, indicates that most academic discussions of Macau heritage are from a history or conservation perspective rather than from the prism of tourism; because of this, the present study aims to explore, from a tourism perspective, the critical factors that are essential to enhance tourist experience when visiting Macau's major heritage sites.     

Factors affecting biasing of capital budgeting cash flow forecasts: evidence from the hotel industry

This study contributes to a neglected aspect of the capital budgeting process, namely, the proposal development stage, which is primarily concerned with project cash flow estimation. Given that the deployment of sophisticated selection techniques is severely undermined when directed to input data suffering from bias, it is surprising that minimal empirical research has sought to explore for antecedent factors associated with biasing of capital budgeting cash flow forecasts. This paper reports the findings of a survey concerned with determining factors associated with biasing of capital budget cash flow forecasts in hotels that are mediated by a management contract. Statistically significant support is provided for the view that higher levels of biasing of capital budget cash flow forecasts occur in the presence of: high emphasis attached to the payback investment appraisal method; deficient reserve funds for furniture, fittings, and equipment (FF&E); low operator accessibility to reserve funds for FF&E; shorter periods of time to management contract expiry; and high emphasis attached to non-financial factors in capital budgeting appraisal.     

Agri-tainment: A New Crop for Farmers

Agricultural tourism has allowed farmers to reach new consumers, cultivate new revenue streams, educate the public regarding their work, and to preserve their way of life. Today, many farmers are going beyond the traditional hayride or pick-your-own orchards to include attractions and amusements. They have transformed the category, even prompting a new name, agri-tainment (agricultural entertainment). In the process, the family farm has become a destination itself. The rationale behind their development along with the consumer interest in experiencing such tourism venues is discussed.     

Partial Assimilation of Technology: Prognosis and Remedial Measures

Prior research mentions that there may be technology assimilation gaps in that a technology may be cumulatively assimilated over a period of time depending on knowledge and experience from initial usage. Thus, stages of partial assimilation are indicated that, if not accounted for, could lead to erroneous understanding of technology adoption and diffusion. However, the phenomenon has not received serious academic attention, and there is still a lack of understanding as to when and why partial assimilation may occur, its consequences to organizations, and remedial steps that could be taken to minimize it. We investigate these issues in the context of assimilation of third-party business-to-business (B2B) e-market by four small firms. Our findings reveal that partial assimilation occurred because of different perceptions of benefit and risk of the two different features of the B2B e-market—the informational (buyer/supplier and product information) and the transactional (auction, request for quote, price negotiation, message archiving, payment systems), arising from different moderating impacts of the organizational (relational norms and the type of business handled) and environmental (perceptions of competitive pressure and institutional norms of technology usage and work practices) contexts of deployment and usage of the two features. The consequences of partial assimilation were mixed; while it was found to be detrimental to firms with low relational norms with their clients, it proved to be gainful for firms with high relational norms. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The cross-sectional relation between conditional heteroskedasticity,the implied volatility smile,and the variance risk premium

This paper estimates how the shape of the implied volatility smile and the size of the variance risk premium relate to parameters of GARCH-type time-series models measuring how conditional volatility responds to return shocks. Markets in which return shocks lead to large increases in conditional volatility tend to have larger variance risk premia than markets in which the impact on conditional volatility is slight. Markets in which negative (positive) return shocks lead to larger increases in future volatility than positive (negative) return shocks tend to have downward (upward) sloping implied volatility smiles. Also, differences in how volatility responds to return shocks as measured by GARCH-type models explain much, but not all, of the variations in excess kurtosis and multi-period skewness across different markets.     

Disaggregating entrepreneurial orientation: the non-linear impact of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking on SME performance

Previous studies have generally established a positive relationship between aggregated measures of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance. However, there are theoretical reasons suggesting that three dimensions of EO (innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking) may possess differential relationships with performance in smaller firms. This study utilizes a sample consisting of 1,668 small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in nine countries across 13 different industries to provide a finer-grained analysis of the EO-performance relationship. Specifically, we theorize and test a non-monotonic influence of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking on SME performance. Innovativeness and proactiveness displayed predominantly positive U-shaped relationships with SME performance. Risk-taking, however, displayed a predominantly negative U-shaped relationship with SME performance. Further, individualism was found to positively moderate the relationships between innovativeness-performance and proactiveness-performance. Taken together, these results suggest that differential relationships exist between three dimensions of EO and SME performance, with important theoretical implications for future EO research.     

Ambidexterity and Knowledge Strategy in Major Projects: A Framework and Illustrative Case Study

We develop a framework to analyze the multi‐level knowledge requirements of complex, major projects in terms of ambidexterity—the ability to exploit (refine existing knowledge) and explore (develop new knowledge). This is an important theme within the wider literature, yet practical operationalization methods for managers and researchers are not evident. We demonstrate the ambidexterity view through an illustrative case study of telecommunications delivery for the London 2012 Olympic Games and show how these concepts can be used to create an effective knowledge strategy. We offer a structure for the analysis of knowledge utilization in projects.     

A solicitor's perspective on charitable gifts in wills

• In the climate of public spending cuts, charities are increasingly expected to fill the gap. Yet charities themselves face huge challenges. Not just increasing demand for their services but falling income and low investment returns. Encouraging philanthropy has never been more important, and that includes legacy giving. Following the announcement last year of the Government's major inheritance tax incentive to encourage us to give more to charity on our death, the time is right for a major report on current trends in charitable legacy giving. Late last year, Mishcon de Reya undertook the most detailed analysis ever by a firm of solicitors of its clients' wills. In a study of over 1000 wills, we did not just look at how many people leave a legacy to charity. We considered the value of the legacy, the type of legacy, the likelihood of the charity ever receiving it, whether clients prefer to give to multiple charities, and the most popular charitable sectors. This article will give a quick overview of our research followed by a more detailed look at the three types of legacy to charity: cash—‘for example, I leave £10,000 to charity’,—specific items—‘for example, I leave a painting to charity’—and residuary gifts—‘for example, I give half my estate to charity’. The article will then briefly touch on the charity sectors most favoured by our clients before giving a brief summary of Mishcon de Reya's key findings in conclusion.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.