Aiming to connect: the business case for diversity in public organizations in The Netherlands

This paper examines the effectiveness of diversity policy and interventions in the Dutch public sector and shows that business case interventions can affect employees’ commitment to their organization, contributing to staff retention rates and improving overall performance. Leadership style, as well as organizational culture, are shown to play a crucial role in the effectiveness of the interventions that were analysed.     

Mitigating Aggressive Small Trade at Tourist Destinations Through Cognitive Restructuring

The goal of the article was to use established theories of individual, organizational, and community learning to hypothesize ways tourism leaders could facilitate their small independent traders that harass visitors’ unlearning of aggressive selling behaviors. Nine hypotheses were posited. For example by tourism leaders: placing greater emphasis on traders’ engagement in the desired nonaggressive selling behaviors than on stopping their engagement in aggressive ones; not supporting traders’ engagement in aggressive selling behaviors but instead openly supporting their engagement in nonaggressive trading; and taking steps to strengthen the traders’ role in their community’s tourism sector. The discussion has implications for how small traders’ selling behaviors are managed at tourist destinations.     

A Second Generation of Genetically Modified Food

Abstract

The aim of this research was a cross-cultural investigation of views regarding Genetically Modified Organisms, specifically food crops, to determine if there were significant differences in the views of French and American respondents. In addition, we sought to introduce the issue of possible consumer benefits of second generation GMOs into the research by examining differences in acceptance of value-enhanced GMOs compared with first generation GMOs for both French and American respondents. Both first and second generation GMOs are better accepted by American respondents than by French respondents, but respondents in both countries perceive a direct benefit from second generation GM foods with at least a less negative attitude toward them. In addition, respondents indicated factors which would make it more likely that they would purchase such enhanced GM foods.     

British contributions to American Seaside Resorts

The British contribution to the 19th century North American seaside resolt was substantial. Most of the activities, structures, and philosophies that attracted North Americans in great numbers to the seaside not only originated in Britain but prior to diffusion to North America had become traditional fixtures in British resort life. The importance of the British contributions can be demonstrated by examining salient characteristics of the resorts on both sides of the Atlantic. Health resorts origins, social characteristics, architectural and landscape designs, visitor activities and perceptions, mechanical innovations aand relationships to transportation phenomena characteristics of British seaside resorts were largely emulated by subsequent institutions in North America. To date it appears that America scholars have been slow to recognize the extent of this cultural debt.     

Travel Life Cycles-A Multitemporal Perspective of Changing Travel Patterns

The temporal dimensions of tourism have received little attention in tourism research. This paper discusses period, life cycle and cohort effects with respect to destination and transportation choice of German residents. Using chi-square statistics, very significant differences are discerned for all three time dimensions. This refutes the determination of the most important effect. Trend surface analysis is used to calculate the underlying main trends. This suggests that at different times the individual effects are more pronounced. Hence, the common failure to consider other time dimensions while discussing one may result in precipitant conclusions and actions.     

Generation Y: opportunity or challenge – strategies to engage Generation Y in the UK attractions’ sector

This study examines the extent to which Generation Y (Gen Y) serves as an opportunity or challenge for visitor attractions in the UK and the corresponding strategies adopted to seek engagement with this generational segment. A multiple-case study design was adopted with face-to-face interviews undertaken with senior personnel at leading visitor attractions across the UK. The paper advances a number of marketing and experiential strategies before advocating that further research is required to explore the growing pains of Gen Y from ‘adolescence’ to ‘adulthood’ if the industry is going to be able to understand, meet and hopefully exceed their needs, wants and expectations in the challenging years to come.     

Town walls,walled towns and tourism: paradoxes and paradigms

The paradoxical relationship between tourists and town walls is examined in the wider context of the walled town tourism. Such towns may be paradigm cases for historic towns as attractions for heritage, urban and cultural tourism among the ‘flows and scapes’ of delocated global tourism. Widely distributed across the ‘old’ world and extant even in the ‘new’, town walls can be seen as the grim barriers between contested identities or as the emblems of the peaceful security of the town within. The paper draws on material gathered as part of a European Interreg IIIc network project – ‘ARCHWAY’. Walled towns and related monuments represent nearly 20% of the 890-strong 2009 world heritage list and half the ‘ARCHWAY’ towns have world heritage status or aspirations. To meet the economic and urban planning challenges, walled towns have developed a range of options for success in, or for surviving, tourism. Examples from across Europe and beyond are critically appraised in the light of the literature of historic and heritage town tourism. As historic towns with obvious signs of past conflict, walled towns point the way to examining urban heritage tourism with de-romanticised vision.     

Whence reform? A critique of the stiglitz perspective

This paper discusses the key hypotheses which Joseph Stiglitz proposed, in his wide-ranging critique of the “Washington Consensus”, with regard to transition reforms and economic policies in China and Russia. The primary purpose is to evaluate the Stiglitz perspective in the light of empirical evidence, including the experience of countries outside China and Russia. Although some of the points Stiglitz makes are important for understanding what has happened in the transition, this paper argues that his perspective mis-interprets the key facts of the Chinese transition, mis-describes the facts of the Russian transition and fails to consider the theoretical and policy implications of the success of a “third model”, which is represented by some Central European and Baltic transitions.     

An Exploratory Study of the Critical Success Factors of One-to-One Web-Marketing: User Perspectives

ABSTRACT

Dell provides personalized marketing services through the Internet (Fischer et al., 2000). This type of application of the Internet is referred to as One-to-One Web-marketing. A review of the current literature relevant to information management and marketing revealed that, relative to other topics, research into this area is lacking. This study addresses this by exploring the Critical Success Factors (CSF) of One- to-One Web-marketing from the user's perspective. It employed a triangulation method of integrating qualitative and quantitative designs in a three-stage research process. The research results revealed that there are five Critical Success Factors of One-to-One Web-marketing from the user perspectives: (1) the satisfaction of customer requirements, (2) the identification of customer differentiation, (3) the design of a quality user interface, (4) the establishment of customer recognition, and (5) the provision of customized services.     

Tourism and ethnicity: situational perspectives

Ethnicity permeates many aspects of tourism, but remains poorly understood in this context. Ethnicity is also a problematic concept because of its variability and the complexity of its interrelation with social structure. Anthropological perspectives show that ethnicity is flexible and negotiated, and this paper draws attention to latent ethnicity and the dynamic character of responses to tourism. The strategies used by peoples in tourist destinations to cope with stereotyping are also discussed. Tourism also contributes to the process of identity formation in new nations, and may encourage majority populations to re-evaluate their perceptions of minorities. In order to stimulate tourism, new nations also compete with one another to lay claim to illustrious names or heroic forebears. Situational adaptations to tourism are illustrated from a variety of perspectives to explore the complex processes of boundary creation, maintenance and change. The emphasis in the paper is conceptual, but is related to contemporary issues in interethnic relations as they occur in tourism. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.