Scenario projects in Japanese government: Strategic approaches for overcoming psychological and institutional barriers

Scenario planning in the public sector has significant differences from scenario planning in the corporate world. Scenario planning in the government not only tends to be focused on issues of higher complexity and significance to public policy, but also in comparison to people in the private business, public officials have fundamental psychological and institutional constraints in their scenario thinking. These constraints make it difficult for them to contemplate multiple ‘untidy’ futures and imagine the possibility of policy failure: skills which are essential for successful scenario projects. Based on specific characteristics of scenario planning in the Japanese government, this paper contributes on better understanding the challenges and strategic solutions in providing more successful scenario planning in the public sector. Specifically, this paper argues that possible solutions in overcoming these constraints may be to shake public bureaucrats out of their thinking by providing free and open venues of conversation and more importantly through ‘derailment’ exercises.     

Perceived hygiene attributes in the hotel industry: customer retention amid the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a crisis in the hotel industry worldwide, but few studies have suggested methods to retain customers. This study proposes hygiene management as a means to minimize the indirect damage from COVID-19 to the hotel industry. It identifies perceived hygiene attributes and explores their influence on hotel image, word of mouth, and revisit intentions. This study identifies and validates three types of perceived hygiene attributes through qualitative and quantitative methods. It uses structural equation modeling to validate hypotheses and concludes that there are significant relationships of influence between the proposed variables. This study provides important and meaningful insights into hotel image and customer behavior through perceived hygiene attributes.     

Is Current Way of Promoting Sustainability,Sustainable?

Consumer behavior regarding sustainable products has been a complex concept. There is a discrepancy between consumer’s espoused concern towards environment and their purchase of environment friendly products. Past literature suggests greenwashing being a possible reason for this discrepancy. With greenwashing being caused by mismatch between communication and perceived performance, this article focuses on assessment of simultaneous impact of both communication and performance elements on brand attitude. A quantitative study was undertaken to test the hypotheses. This was followed by a qualitative study to understand alternative explanation of hypotheses that was not accepted. The research revealed that a consumer’s attitude toward a green brand is impacted both by his or her general skepticism towards green ads and the credibility that she assigns to the firm’s green message. Perceived value of product also had a positive impact on brand attitude. Findings advance academic literature and support managerial community by highlighting factors for building a positive green brand attitude and resultantly avoiding the trap of being equated with greenwashing.     

Positive welfare effects of trade barriers in a dynamic partial equilibrium model

We develop a simple two-region, cobweb-type dynamic partial equilibrium model to demonstrate the existence of optimal, possibly non-zero, trade barriers. A pure comparative statics analysis of our model suggests that a reduction of trade barriers, modeled as small but positive import tariffs, always enhances welfare. However, taking a dynamic perspective reveals that nonlinear trade interactions between two regions may generate endogenous price fluctuations which can hamper welfare. Finally, we allow special interest groups, such as consumers or producers from these two regions, to lobby for a particular level of trade barriers. Our model predicts that time-varying trade barriers may be another channel for market instability.     

Validating a customer well-being index related to natural wildlife tourism

This study reports an attempt to validate a customer well-being (CWB) index related to natural wildlife tourism. It was hypothesized that the CWB index related to wildlife tourism has a positive influence on travel outcomes (length of stay, number of visits, and total expenses), mediated by perceived value and customer loyalty. These hypotheses were tested using four waves of surveys of customers (overnight visitors) intercepted at the park in a two-year period. The survey data provided support for the hypotheses, which, in turn, lend validation support to the CWB index. Managerial implications of the customer well-being index are also discussed.     

Perceived risk and insurance decision taking for small losses

Abstract

Little systematic research has investigated differences in expressed attitude as a function of the manner in which probability information is communicated to a decision maker. The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in expressed attitude when insurance coverage is introduced in a known-risk situation (the probability of loss is known), an uncertain situation (there is no prior information on the probability of loss) or an ambiguous (the information provided is vague). The experiments reported in this paper have been developed and tested in the classroom with undergraduate students. Unlike the vast majority of previous work dealing with lotteries and laboratory gambles, this study examine the behavior of people when facing a purchase decision on a well-known consumer good, i.e. a bottle of wine. The comparative results provide some evidence on the risk-taking behavior of consumers for small losses. Within an insurance context, people prefer the more familiar option of a known-risk situation and contrary to expectations, the results do not provide support to ambiguity aversion but to ambiguity seeking.     

Public Sector Organizations and Cocreation With Citizens: A Literature Review on Benefits,Drivers, and Barriers

ABSTRACT

Cocreation has captured the attention of public managers and policymakers and yet the literature focusing in the public sector is still relatively dispersed. In this literature review we present a contextualized analysis of the potential reasons that lead public sector organizations to cocreate with citizens and identify potential barriers that may hamper the adoption of cocreation in public settings. The analysis undertaken allowed us to conclude that the topic is increasingly capturing the interest of researchers, although the state of the literature is characterized by a reduced heterogeneity in research methods. We classified cocreation benefits in the public sector as innovation related, improved decision-making, and symbolic related, and we categorized the drivers for cocreation according to three broad categories: external, relation-specific and internal. Finally, we identified potential barriers of cocreation, including structural, organizational, and behavioral barriers.     

When the going gets tough: the influence of expatriate resilience and perceived organizational inclusion climate on work adjustment and turnover intentions

Abstract

Despite the strong evidence for the beneficial influence of resilience for employee stress resistance in domestic settings, the construct has not received much attention in the expatriation literature, where stress is considered a major factor for expatriates’ poor cross-cultural adjustment and turnover. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, the present study examines resilience as an antecedent of expatriate work adjustment and turnover intentions. Furthermore, this study investigates the moderating role of perceived organizational inclusion climate as a resource-protecting organizational factor. Results from a survey of 175 expatriates in South Korea indicate that resilience is positively related to expatriate work adjustment and that these positive effects are more pronounced when expatriates perceive their organizational climate to be highly inclusive. Furthermore, findings suggest that work adjustment mediates the effects of resilience on turnover intentions and that this mediation is moderated by a perceived organizational inclusion climate. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

职业学校语文课程不重视实训教学的原因分析

实训是一种强调通过实际训练让学生掌握、获取知识并提升能力的教学方法。作为工具性学科的职业学校语文课程,应重视实训教学。文章分析了职业学校语文课程不使用实训教学的原因。     

Using deep learning and visual analytics to explore hotel reviews and responses

This study aims to use computational linguistics, visual analytics, and deep learning techniques to analyze hotel reviews and responses collected on TripAdvisor and to identify response strategies. To this end, we collected and analyzed 113,685 hotel reviews and responses and their semantic and syntactic relations. We are among the first to use visual analytics and deep learning-based natural language processing to empirically identify managerial responses. The empirical results indicate that our proposed multi-feature fusion, convolutional neural network model can make different types of data complement each other, thereby outperforming the comparisons. The visualization results can also be used to improve the performance of the proposed model and provide insights into response strategies, which further shows the theoretical and technical contributions of this study.