Public policies creating tensions in Montado management models: Insights from farmers’ representations

The Montado is the silvo-pastoral land use system dominant in Southern Portugal, and similar to the Dehesa in Southern Spain. These systems combine an open tree cover of cork and holm oaks with grazing in the under-cover. Despite the acknowledged value of these systems due to their adaptation to the scarcity biophysical conditions of Southern Iberia, the uniqueness of cork production, the biodiversity values and the support of multiple public goods and services, in Portugal the area of the Montado is declining every year. It has been shown before how this decline is related to increased grazing pressure and use of inadequate soil mobilization techniques. Supported on social sciences theoretical insights, this paper focus on the farmers decision process, and the representations that support their decisions. The analysis is grounded on a large scale survey followed by in-depth interviews to Montado farmers. The results show that there is an underlying conflict between farmers representation of the Montado and the practices they are applying in their everyday management. Dominant representations of the Montado by farmers rely strongly on the tree cover and the forestry component of the system. While their management is strongly focused on the livestock and grazing resources. Farmers are abandoning a resilient thinking of their farm system considering the factors internal to the system, to adapt an external, driver oriented representation of their farm system. CAP coupled payments are seen as the main cause of this change. If the policy construction remains in its present state, the resilience of the Montado as a complex socio-ecological system is threatened in the very short term.     

Contextualized representations of brand extensions: Are feature lists or frames the basic components of consumer cognition?

According to the common view in consumer behavior, consumers represent brands and product categories mentally as lists of independent product features and engage in feature matching when they evaluate brand-product category compounds such as brand extensions. However, we demonstrate that brand extension concepts are subject to context effects and largely contextually organized — empirical evidence which suggests that they are represented by more flexible mental structures than independent feature lists. As an alternative, brand extensions (e.g., McDonald's Theme Park) may be viewed as conceptual combinations in which the original brand or company name (e.g., McDonald's) acts on the head concept of the extension category (e.g., theme parks) as a modifier. Moreover, we suggest that the contextual and relational structure of brand extensions may be explained more adequately by mental frames than feature list representations.     

Mythical representations of trust in auditors and the preservation of social order in the financial community

The present paper investigates financial practitioners’ use and perception of audited financial statements. In-depth interviews, which we conducted with Canadian institutional investors, financial analysts and bankers, indicate: (1) a firm tendency to favour the quality of management over the content of financial statements in investment decisions and recommendation processes; and (2) a fundamental scepticism regarding the work of auditors. However, representations of auditor trustworthiness abound in formal texts surrounding the financial analysis domain—as if audited financial statements and the trust they convey towards numbers are indispensable to the work of financial analysts. Based on the work of Roland Barthes, we argue that financial practitioners’ trust in auditors constitutes a mythical representation whose main function is to maintain order and reproduce status quo within the financial system.     

‘Though it is but a promise’: Business probity in Arnold Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns

Noting the increasing interest amongst business historians in the socio-cultural dimensions of business, this article presents a reading of Arnold Bennett's early twentieth-century novel Anna of the Five Towns. The purpose of the article is both to explore the evidential value of cultural representations, such as the novel, in relation to issues currently to the fore in business history, such as trust, and also to act as a means through which to examine some of the biases and assumptions present in the literature. Thus the article speaks also to issues of historiography.     

Rukai indigenous tourism: Representations,cultural identity and Q method

In tourism, cultural representations of indigenous destinations are problematic. They are essential to the promotion of tourism, making destinations understandable and desirable to visitors. But they are also blamed for upsetting the cultural equilibrium of smaller destinations. However, in practice, the origin, mechanism and effects of touristic representations are not easy to identify. In this study, the problem of representations and resident cultural identity in indigenous tourism is explored. In consideration of the generative nature of representations and the contingency of subjectivities toward them, this study is context-specific, focusing on a small but significant community in southern Taiwan where indigenous tourism is a dominant industry and social issue. Q method, a technique designed for the systematic study of subjectivity in terms of opinions, beliefs, and attitudes is employed, eliciting responses from a P set (sample) of 30 participants. Subjectivities were elicited using photographs of one cultural representation, the indigenous Rukai standing stones. It was found that representations must be learned but can be ignored, and that in this community tourism is not the only socio-economic power that drives the feedback loop between representations and subjectivity. For tourism management, implications are that representations can be highly effective tools for destination promotion when informed by the diverse and highly individualized subjectivities of its residents and the production of quality local products.     

Developing network insight

A challenge facing organizations is that of amalgamating possibilities which do not exist in a transparent and concentrated form, but rather as dispersed individual cognitive ‘pictures’ perceived by managers embedded in business networks. Based on our research of business networks involving manufacturers of consumer goods, pharmaceutical companies, producers of semiconductors and telecommunication and utility service providers, we propose the concept of network insight, which does not consist merely of extant pictures held by individual managers, but is grounded in the practice of inter-firm exchange. We argue that developing network insight is a managerial challenge encompassing the amalgamation of dispersed pieces of atomized network pictures through heedful, multilateral interactions. Such a managerial activity transcends the task-specific knowledge base of managerial cognition and leads to objectified organizational learning within a business network. Managers that develop insight in business networks are able to mobilize other actors and create a competitive advantage for their organization that is crucial for innovation and growth.     

Cultural political economy and urban heritage tourism

The paper explains a cultural political economy “framing” for interpreting heritage tourism in urban contexts. Key ideas behind this research perspective are explained and illustrated through discussion of past research studies of urban heritage tourism. It is underpinned by a relational view of the inter-connectedness of societal relations, and an emphasis on taking seriously both the cultural/semiotic and the economic/political in the co-constitution of urban heritage tourism’s social practices and features. A case study of heritage tourism in Nanjing, China considers cultural political economy’s relevance and value, including the distinctive research questions it raises. It reveals, for example, how economic relations in the built environment were related to tourist meaning-making and identities in the cultural/semiotic sphere.     

"三个代表"是我党事业必胜之道

本文以哲理、史实、现情为据，探索“三个代表”的理论、历史、现实渊源及其本质意义，揭示党的事业胜利的内在规律性，从而提高按“三个代表”要求作人处事，执政为民的坚定性和自觉性。     

The emergent role of value representation in managing business relationships

This paper explores value processes, their effects, and their management in business relationships. Over time, scholars progressively moved their interest from the value of the objects exchanged to the value of business relationships. However, how value is related to interactive processes that characterize business relationships still remained unclear. With this scope, the paper brings to the fore recent studies on the role of actors' perceptions of value and the interactive features of the business context. The empirical research involves 77 interviews carried out over two years with actors internal and external to the Mikron Tool's business network, a Swiss leader in manufacturing high-precision tools. The study shows that four key value processes – value creation, value communication, value measurement, and value appropriation – determine specific consequences that must be managed to achieve effective business relationships. Moreover, empirical evidences highlight the relevance of value representation in affecting the four value processes. The study contributes to an improved understanding of value management in interactive and interdependent business contexts. Also, it draws attention to the need for a better integration between the traditional economic view of value and recent insights from the fields of organizational psychology and sociology.     

The social construction of tourism online destination image: A comparative semiotic analysis of the visual representation of Seoul

This study examines the destination image of Seoul as represented by photographs online, and compares it to the traditional projected image found in printed brochures and guidebooks by replicating a previous study. Using visual semiotics, the social construction of tourism online destination image is investigated in terms of denotative and connotative signs. Using language-specific keyword searches, ‘Seoul travel’ on Naver, Google and Baidu, three demographic perspectives were examined including Korean, international English speaking and, Chinese. It was found that these different online contexts represent Seoul in different ways. Naver represents Seoul in more detail; Google and Baidu represent a mix of other destinations with Seoul connoting differences in perception, or reflecting the constraints of individual or group travel. The major findings suggest that the organic online self-representation of individual travel experiences by travelers, makes tourism as a soft power more effective, by supplementing the projected image of Seoul.