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.     

Getting closer to whales—passenger expectations and experiences, and the management of swim with dwarf minke whale interactions in the Great Barrier Reef

Whale-watching tourism is a growth industry worldwide. In Australia, with whale-watchers approaching one million per annum there has been considerable effort to develop management regimes that protect the whales while enabling the development of a sustainable ecotourism industry. A mixture of National and State laws and regulations have governed the industry (Tourism based on free-ranging marine wildlife: opportunities and responsibilities, Wildlife Tourism Research Report No. 11, Status Assessment of Wildlife Tourism in Australia Series, CRC for Sustainable Tourism, Gold Coast, Queensland) but these have been mainly derived from experiences with humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) whale watching from vessels at sea. In this article we describe the development and nature of new and rapidly growing swim-with-whales operations based on the dwarf minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) in the Great Barrier Reef of northern Queensland. The distinctly different quality of these operations raise interesting questions for long-term management (Towards sustainable management of the developing dwarf minke whale tourism industry in northern Queensland, CRC Reef Research Technical Report 27, James Cook University of North Queensland, 30pp (emended version of SC/50/WW1)).In the 1999–2000 seasons, 453 passengers (88.1% of respondents) swam with minke whales. Only 25% of visitors came specifically for the whale interactions and 43% learned of the whales on board the vessel. Passengers thus had low expectations about whales and encounters. A variety of factors, including the diving experience, particular dive sites, a range of wildlife species and socializing contributed to visitor satisfaction. Nonetheless, there was a significant correlation between visitor satisfaction and closeness of approaches by the whales, total number of whales seen and total time spent with whales. We discuss the key issues associated with swim-with-whales programs in the light of our findings. The cooperative engagement of tourism operators, researchers and government management agencies is a feature of this new industry.     

英国国际投资环境解析及其启示

该运用国际投资环境理论剖析了英国在营造其国际投资环境上成功独到的做法：秉承地域之便、实现制度创新、凸现资本效果以及支持性产业互动发展。以此为借鉴，在立足广东，着重围绕以入世为契机，发挥广东特殊的地利优势、打造国际引资环境、提高人才素质、规范人才市场以及努力消除跨化差异等几个方面提出了应对之策。     

Improvements onthe Earnings Forecast Model——Based on Correlation between Financial Ratio, Auditor Opinion and Future Earnings

This paper aims to find evidence for the improvements on the present earnings forecast models through analyzing the correlation among financial ratios, auditor opinion of listed companies and their future earnings. This paper uses two statistical regression methods including Logistic model and Linear model to examine the inner interaction between financial ratios and future earnings from qualitative and quantitative perspectives respectively. Empirical tests find that financial ratios, especially ROE, can help to predict future earnings. Then we add auditor opinion variable into Logistic model to test whether going concern opinion in the auditor reports can be helpful for earnings forecast. Result shows the degree of optimistic statement of going concern opinion is significantly correlated with future earnings but with the disturbance of earnings management.     

农村小额信贷可持续发展国际经验分析

文章以全新的视角,从国外可持续发展的农村小额信贷的典型模式,泰国农业和农村合作社银行、印尼人民银行农村信贷部和孟加拉乡村银行等三家银行经营业绩分析与农村小额信贷可持续发展国际经验分析三个方面,为农村小额信贷的实践和发展提供了思路。     

Why do auditors fail? What might work? What won’t?†

Auditing failures and scandals have become commonplace. In response, reformers (including the Kingman Review in the U.K. and a recent report of the U.K.’s Competition and Market Authority) have proposed a variety of remedies, including prophylactic bans on auditors providing consulting services to their clients in the belief that this will minimize the conflicts of interest that produce auditing failures. Although useful, such reforms are already in place to a considerable degree and may have reached the point of diminishing returns. Moreover, this strategy does not address the deeper problem that clients (or their managements) may not want aggressive auditing, but rather prefer a deferential and perfunctory audit. If so, auditors will realize that they are marketing a ‘commodity’ service and cannot successfully compete based on their quality of services. Rationally, they would respond to such a market by seeking to adopt a cost-minimization strategy, competing by reducing the cost of their services and not investing in new technology or higher-priced personnel.

What could change this pattern? Gatekeepers, including auditors, serve investors, but are hired by corporate management. To induce gatekeepers to better serve investors, one needs to reduce the ‘agency costs’ surrounding this relationship by making gatekeepers more accountable to investors. This might be accomplished through litigation (as happens to some degree in the U.S.), but the U.K. and Europe have rules that discourage collective litigation. Thus, a more feasible approach would be to give investors greater ability to select and remove the auditor. This paper proposes a two part strategy to this end: (1) public ‘grading’ of the auditor by the audit regulator in an easily comparable fashion (and with a mandatory grading curve), and (2) enabling a minority of the shareholders (hypothetically, 10%) to propose a replacement auditor for a shareholder vote. It further argues that both activist shareholders and diversified shareholders might support such a strategy and undertake it under different circumstances. Absent such a focus on agency costs, however, reformers are likely only re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.     

审计师选择与设立审计委员会的自选择问题——来自中国证券市场的经验证据

本文采用Heckman(1978)的二阶段回归方法,以2002-2006年我国证券市场上市公司为研究样本,在研究审计师选择的同时控制了设立审计委员会的自选择问题,并将公司设立审计委员会的实际情况与假设的相反情况进行对比,分析它们不同的审计师选择倾向,从而间接检验了审计委员会的治理效率。研究发现:自选择问题对审计师选择存在显著的影响。因此,拒绝了公司随机设立审计委员会的原假设;在控制自选择之后,回归方程中变量的斜率系数整体上存在显著差异;并且没有设立审计委员会的公司比设立审计委员会的公司更可能聘请四大会计师事务所。     

Auditor Quality,IFRS Adoption,and Stock Price Crash Risk: Korean Evidence

This paper investigates the relationship among auditor quality, International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) adoption and stock price crash risk. Using 657 unique listed companies spanning 2002–2014 in Korea, this study finds that stock price crash risk decreases, especially for firms using Big 4 auditors, after IFRS adoption in Korea. Stock price crash risk decreases for a firm included in Big 4 auditors, while it does not increase for a firm excluded from Big 4 auditors after IFRS adoption. Finally, this study finds that Big 4 auditor decreases stock price crash risk only when the firm size is above-median.     

Relevant and Preferred Public Service: A study of user experiences and value creation in public transit

When public service success is dependent upon creating value that attracts users, public managers can benefit from adopting private sector principles. This article draws on the theory of attractive quality and strategic management research to focus on the theoretical and managerial implications of how organizations’ resource allocations affect user experiences. The present study shows how public transit organizations’ achievement of twenty-five different service requirements affected their offerings’ relevance and preference among 930 users. This article increases the understanding of how strategic choices and prioritization between various service requirements affect both the effectiveness and efficiency of (public) service offerings.     

Tourist experiences,phenomenographic analysis,post‐postivism and neural network software

This paper argues that tourist experiences are essentially individualistic, although it is possible to discern consensual realties. It follows the viewpoint that positivistic research methodologies contain limitations in not being able to define the nature of individual tourist experience, and suggests that phenomenographic analysis may be one approach that permits both a revelation of individual experience while permitting model building of the shared consensus of what is actually happening. More tentatively it is suggested that, when allied with the use of current developments in software, such as that of CATPAC™, a post‐positivist paradigm of research results. Some results of research using this approach are indicated. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.