The art of wasting time: sociability,friendship, community and holidays

Slow tourism is motivated by the desire for personal and communal well-being. It emerged as an antidote to the fast-paced imperatives of global capitalism that urge the entrepreneurial self to speed up and work harder to achieve and demonstrate desired social status. The entrepreneurial self can be understood in the contexts of neoliberalism and the class- and gender-based histories of time-thrift and rational recreation; the entrepreneurial self uses leisure time purposively in the pursuit of status, avoids idle pursuits and has restricted capacity to experience leisurely social relationships. In this article, it is argued that leisurely social relations can be reclaimed by letting go, even temporarily, of time-thrift and the compulsion to use leisure time purposively. Data drawn from in-depth interviews with repeat visitors at two Australian caravan parks revealed that for the period of their holiday the tourists relax, refuse to be driven by schedules, socialise with other tourists and feel no compulsion to use time purposively. The key reasons the tourists return to the parks each year were for the friendships and the sense of community they experience as part of the holiday. Slow tourism by its very nature rejects time-thrift, however, as the movement is harnessed by global capitalism, slow tourism risks becoming a source of conspicuous consumption. The findings of this study suggest that friendship and community thrive more readily in conditions where the need to achieve and demonstrate social status is discarded along with time-thrift.     

Supporting the global e‐teacher

This paper describes the scope of the challenge needed to support university teaching staff to become effective global e‐teachers. This challenge involves teachers in broadening their understanding of cultural diversity, as well as acquiring new skills in educational design and online teaching and learning. Three ways of supporting teachers are described: growth of individual teachers’ skills and confidence, a focus on curriculum and educational design, and development of appropriate university policy. In reality, support is needed in all three areas. Finally, some general principles for staff development of the global e‐teacher are suggested.     

Facing a Biased Adviser While Choosing a Retirement Plan: The Impact of Financial Literacy and Fair Disclosure

Buying a retirement saving plan in Israel involves meeting with an agent whose interests may differ from those of his or her customers. The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of the advice given by the agent, along with that of two further factors: a fair disclosure statement regarding the agent's conflict of interest, and the customer's degree of financial literacy. Two experiments conducted among undergraduate students in Israel showed that customers mostly follow the agent's recommendation, even against their best interest, and despite the presence of a fair disclosure statement. Only participants with high financial literacy, who received a disclosure statement, did examine the alternatives closely and rejected the advice when the recommendation was damaging. We also ruled out the existence of a negative psychological reactance response to a disclosure statement that would work to the detriment of financially literate participants.     

But Is It Myopia? Risk Aversion and the Efficiency of Stock‐Based Managerial Incentives

This paper points out that stock incentives do not lead to myopia unless they result in more emphasis on the short-term than would occur under an optimal contract. It shows that myopia findings relative to the standard used throughout the literature (first-best efficiency) are often reversed when evaluated relative to the relevant standard of optimal contracting. Results reported by the previous literature to be myopia often in fact have excessive emphasis on the long-term. The paper solves in closed-form for the region in parameter space which gives rise to these reversals and shows that it can be arbitrarily large .     

Brand,value and relationship equities and loyalty-intentions in the Australian supermarket industry

The current study advances the emergent literature pertaining to the impacts of brand, value and relationship equities on consumer loyalty-intentions along three major fronts. First, key inter-relationships among the equities are examined; thus advancing theory. Second, procedural advancement occurs via examining the hypothesised effects after controlling for several demographic covariates. Third, the current study presents an aggregate level and a firm level analysis, providing additional insight. The chosen supermarket scenario also adds value to the study. A large national survey of supermarket consumers supports the hypotheses. Micro level analysis reveals that Woolworths does best in leveraging value-equity, Coles does best in leveraging brand-equity, while IGA does best in leveraging relationship-equity. Overall, the study makes important theoretical and managerial contributions to the literature.     

Exploring safety impacts of pedestrian-crossing configurations at signalized junctions on urban roads with public transport routes

This study explored the impacts of pedestrian-crossing configurations and other design features, on accident occurrences at signalized junctions situated on central public transport routes (PTRs) of urban arterials. Statistical tests and negative-binomial regression models were applied to identify factors affecting accidents and to examine accident numbers of the PTR junctions as opposed to comparison-sites. At the PTR junctions, a consistent impact of pedestrian-crossing configurations on accidents was found, where a gradated-crossing with mixed-shifting is the least safe. Four-legged junctions tend to higher accident numbers relative to the three-legged junctions. PTR junctions are characterized by higher accident numbers, related to comparison-sites, when controlling for other design characteristics. The study findings may assist in selecting preferable design solutions while planning PTR.     

Labor-management contract negotiations in an electronic meeting room: A case study

We present perhaps the first case study of labor-management contract talks conducted in an electronic meeting room supported by a computer Negotiation Support System (NSS). The organization's union and management representatives spent a total of 57 hours (13 sessions) in the electronic meeting room; their efforts resulted successfully in a contract ratified by both sides. The NSS described comprised three tools from theGroup Systems electronic meeting system and three ad hoc tools. Besides the NSS, three other intervention factors were introduced in tandem with the NSS: new negotiation process techniques, the active involvement of third party mediators, and a unique negotiation setting. The new process techniques were introduced based on the goals of integrative bargaining and the Win-Win techniques. The negotiation process was divided into three distinct stages: strategy, issues, and bargaining.     

Cycle Time in Packaged Software Firms

Reduction of cycle time (i.e., time to market) is a fundamental competitive strategy in many industries. With the current proliferation of personal computer (PC) technology, software developers face intense competition. However, unlike their counterparts in other consumer goods markets, product development managers in the software industry appear to be less concerned with (or even aware of) cycle time than they are with other competitive variables. To explore the role of cycle-time reduction in the process of developing software packages, Erran Carmel conducted a study of 15 software package companies in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. The survey results indicate that software package developers are generally unaware of cycle-time reduction as a management concept. Instead, software developers tend to focus on rapid development, with an emphasis on “crunch” periods of intense effort aimed at meeting a deadline. During these periods of peak activity, 87% of the developers in core teams worked more than 56 hours per week and 47% worked more than 71 hours per week. In terms of the organizational variables necessary for cycle-time reduction, all of the survey respondents point to the importance of a small, cohesive, core development team, similar to a cross-functional team. Members of the core team are entrepreneurial and share a common vision of the product's design, use, and long-term direction. As for the development variables associated with cycle-time reduction, the software companies in the survey typically do not use process models or risk analysis techniques. Similarly, they devote scant resources to automated tools. For the majority of the firms in the survey, annual investment in automated software development tools is less than $1,000 per developer. On the other hand, reuse (as embodied in object-oriented design and development) and incremental innovation are important to all of the sample firms. Although quality assurance (QA) activities are not addressed in the innovation literature, QA is a significant cycle-time component in software development. As demonstrated by the industry practice of releasing products with long lists of known defects, the software product category clearly has quality problems. With the current boom in new users, pressure will grow for improved quality. To remain competitive, software developers need to determine how they can better integrate QA activities into the development process while reducing cycle time.