Introverts abroad? Long-term visitors' adaptations to the multicultural tourism context of Costa Blanca,Spain

Many people from North-Western Europe have quite long stays in Mediterranean Spain, partly related to phenomena such as ‘wintering’, seasonal movements and sabbatical holidays, for the most part dwelling in their own houses or apartments. This paper explores intercultural relations of long-term visitors and it raises some questions on differentiation and dedifferentiation in the consolidated holidaymaking context of Costa Blanca (Alicante, Spain). The paper includes visitors' assessments of certain central aspects of their (temporary) life in Spain, based on an exit survey. It is revealed that long-term visitors have far more varied and wide-ranging adjustments to their new and/or temporary surroundings than is usually assumed in news media and in some previous scholarly works. The study also demonstrates that generalised views depicting long-term visitors as secluded and living predominantly in compatriot enclaves are too simple, especially in long-established holiday destination areas. A considerable proportion of long-term visitors make an effort to relate to the language, culture, and social conditions of the host society. It is argued that a more nuanced and complex analysis is needed in order to describe the varied life situations of sojourners and other long-term visitors in Mediterranean Spain.     

Encounters in the Fields – Tourism to the Battlefields of the Western Front

The First World War is now slipping beyond the realm of lived experience, yet it continues to wield a profound fascination over the British modern imagination. The Western Front in France and Belgium, which was the decisive theatre of operations for the Allied troops, has fashioned its own mythology and imagery and has secured a firm place in modern memory. Although the unremarkable topography of the region now visually betrays little of the momentous nature of the battles fought across its expanses, thousands of British visitors travel to the area throughout the year. This paper explores the ways in which tourists embarking on commercial coach tours engage with the battlefield landscape by examining contemporary tourist performance. It also considers the role of the tour guide in setting and directing the tourist encounter.     

国际低碳经济发展经验及对中国的启示

在气候问题备受关注的国际大背景下,发展低碳经济越来越受到国际社会的重视。自2003年英国提出“低碳经济”发展概念以来,发达国家在发展低碳经济方面已经积累了一定的经验。中国目前面临巨大的温室气体减排压力,能源安全和生态安全面临威胁。应该借鉴国际低碳经济发展经验,在加强法律和政策支持、优化能源利用结构和产业结构、加强低碳技术的国际合作和自主研发能力、实施低碳化的城市公共交通以及倡导绿色消费等方面促进低碳经济的发展。     

借鉴国际经验加快中国个人信用制度建设

从经济学理论看,个人信用制度的建设对一国经济的健康发展至关重要.应借鉴国外个人信用制度建设的成功经验,并结合中国具体国情,加快中国个人信用制度建设.     

Academic entrepreneurial hybrids: Accounting and accountability in the case of MegaRide

The current paper focuses on how multiple values shape accounting and accountability practices in hybrid organizations. It concentrates on the complex domain of academic spin-offs, more fully described as hybrid knowledge-intensive organizations, aiming to understand how accounting and accountability practices can be constitutive of hybrid academic entrepreneurial logics and identities and how these, in turn, favor the development of accounting and accountability practices. The study employs a theoretically informed in-depth single case study of the academic spin-off MegaRide of the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) for the period January to May 2021. The findings show how, in MegaRide, hybrid academic entrepreneurial identities emerged at both the individual and organizational levels, leading to successful technology transfer, with an undeniable impact on the local context and society.     

Funding the story of hybrid ventures: Crowdfunder lending preferences and linguistic hybridity

Prosocial crowdfunding platforms are venues for individual lenders to allocate resources to ventures that specifically pursue economic and social value. In a setting where hybridity is expected, do crowdfunders respond positively to category-spanning ventures, or do they prefer to fund ventures that are more clearly situated within a single category? Drawing on theory rooted in category membership and spanning, our hypotheses test whether prosocial crowdfunding lenders will more quickly allocate resources to hybrid microenterprises that communicate their hybridity, or to those that communicate a single one of their dual aims. Our study demonstrates that even in such a setting, crowdfunders lend more quickly to microenterprises that position themselves within a single linguistic category in which the social is emphasized over the economic. This suggests that how hybrid organizations position themselves in their linguistic narratives has a significant impact on resource allocation by external prosocial audiences.     

Virtual reality tourism experiences: Addiction and isolation

This qualitative research note reports two neglected themes in research on virtual reality tourism experiences, i.e. its potentially addictive nature and temporary sense of isolation. Existing work on virtual reality tourism experiences has applied existing knowledge and theories and has solely tested how VR applications can positively mediate or moderate the tourist experience. This study adopted an inductive approach, analyzing contents of reviews and blogs, and consequently uncovered a temporary sense of isolation and the addictive nature of virtual reality as hidden themes within virtual reality tourism experiences. We stress the importance of further work on addiction and a sense of isolation in terms of their nature, role, and effects.     

借鉴国际经验 加快我国创业投资的发展

本文在回顾我国创业投资发展历史的基础上,分析了创业投资发展中存在的问题,总结了国外创业投资发展的有益经验,提出了借鉴国外成功经验、促进我国创业投资发展的几点建议。     

Caught in the Middle: Organizational Impediments to Middle Managers’ Work-life Balance

As increased work demands and longer working hours become the reality for many employees, the concept of work-life balance has received increasing attention. This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of Australian middle managers, which investigated the impact of middle managers’ daily organizational experiences on their lives both in and beyond the workplace. We focus on respondents’ reports of the difficulty in achieving work-life balance, specifically, the organizational impediments to creating balance. Three particular areas where these impediments were apparent are: the impact of new technologies; limits to autonomy and control in the middle management role; and difficulties in taking advantage of flexibility initiatives in the workplace. As middle managers are caught in the middle between work and personal life, there is a need for organizations to support middle managers’ efforts to achieve work-life balance if the organization’s long-term goals are to be achieved.     

Smart logistics transformation collaboration between manufacturers and logistics service providers: A supply chain contracting perspective

Intelligent transformation of manufacturers requires smart logistics transformation collaboration, which improves competitiveness. In this study, we construct a Stackelberg game model based on the mutual influence and restriction in the relationship between a manufacturer and a logistics service provider (LSP) undergoing smart logistics transformation. We investigate whether cost-sharing (CS) or revenue-sharing (RS) contracts can coordinate the supply chain and suggest a hybrid CS–RS contract to improve performance. We find that, compared with decentralized options, CS and RS contracts achieve a higher level of smart logistics transformation. While the coordination and effectiveness of CS contracts are superior to those of RS contracts, neither can fully coordinate the supply chain. The proposed hybrid CS–RS contract allows the manufacturer to share the LSP’s costs before the transformation and its partial revenue after transformation, so that the LSP can reduce its service charge, thereby achieving full supply chain coordination.