infonet-economy

When risk mitigation fails, a company is often faced with one or more crisis events. Crisis can take many forms. A type of crisis, a smoldering crisis, can continue gaining momentum over time, slowly eroding the future success of an organization. This paper uses archival case analysis to look at how two airlines — Southwest Airlines and US Airways — responded to the smoldering crisis of loss of profitability and ridership in their short - haul mar kets over the period from the early 1990s to mid - 2000s. These two companies made very different responses to the smoldering crisis, with US Airways choosing a structural response, triggering a cascade of smoldering and acute crisis, while Southwest emphas ized executional strategic adjustments that allowed it to maintain profitability as it transitioned to new operating conditions.

In this paper, we propose a constraint-based model for the combination of a course timetabling problem and a course allocation problem for secondary schools in Switzerland. Course timetabling has been widely studied for Universities, but for schools, solutions have only been proposed for specific countries or even for specific schools. In fact, timetabling problems presents the difficulty to be case-specific through specific constraints satisfaction. In addition, due to a recent reform of the education system in Switzerland, the timetabling problem is combined with a course allocation problem that has an important impact on timetables. Indeed, some topics are defined by a curriculum but each student may be assigned to up to five different options depending on past grades and students choices. Both problems, timetabling and allocation must be solved simultaneously and educational objectives are related to both composition of classes and timetables of students. A description of the problem and the educational objectives to consider are presented. Finally, a complete constraint-based model based on hard and soft constraints has been designed to solve the combined problem, both types of constraints are described in detail and a qualitative complexity analysis of this model is given.

This paper examines the ratings of 12 influential wine critics on the Bordeaux en primeur market over the vintages 2003 – 2012. We hypothesize that wine experts differ significantly in their rating approach and in fl uence on prices. We fi nd that European critics are less transparent and in general more severe in their scoring than their American counterparts. Experts also appear to reach a relatively strong consensus on overall wine quality but have more diverse opinions on wines that achieve a surprising level of quality given the vintage, the ranking, or the appellation from which they originate. Our evidence also suggests that Robert Parker and Jean-Marc Quarin are the most in fl uential critics, as a 10% surprise in their scores leads to a price increase of around 7%. We further fi nd that their impact is higher for appella- tions and estates that are not covered by the of fi cial 1855 classi fi cation and for the best vintages.

C o mo se difunden las innovaciones en gestión de recursos humanos (GRH) entre empresas es un tema de gran interés y actualidad; al que , sin embargo, la literatura académica ha prestado relativamente poca atención. El presente artículo utiliza metodología de redes sociales para analizar empíricamente el posible impacto positivo de la participación en redes de intercambio de conocimiento para la implemen tación de innovaciones en gestión de GRH . Los resultados indican que aquellas empresas que participan activamente en el establecimiento de relaciones de intercambio de conocimiento de GRH con otras empresas, tanto a través de acuerdos formales - contractuale s como mediante relaciones informales - colaborativas, tienen una propensión mayor a realizar innovaciones en esta área. Como resultado, las empresas más expuestas a nuevos conocimientos son en mayor medida más innovadoras en sus sistemas de gestión de RRHH. Se concluye que el establecimiento de relaciones inter - organizativas tiene efectos positivos en la introducción de prácticas innovadoras de gestión de GRH.

This chapter explains how HR executives can leverage social network understanding in order to facilitate post-merger integration. We describe two social network mechanisms (brokerage and contagion) and explain their effect on organizational functioning. We then present a framework incorporating interventions in three core areas of HR involvement in mergers and map those interventions on the timeline of the merger so as to provide a roadmap for developing and implementing interventions based on social network insight. We argue that an understanding of social networks and the proposed interventions would allow HR executives to better monitor and steer post-merger integration.

This study examines the consequences of customer dissatisfaction in upscale hotel. In particular, it is to investigate whether attitude toward a hotel mediates the relationship between customer dissatisfaction and three negative behavioral intention, such as switching service provider, spreading negative word-of-mouth, and complaining.

Sustainable tourism relies on destination. Sustainable tourism is applicable not only to the environmental perspective , but also to the industries of practical hospitality and tourism. Maintaining sustainable tourist and guest flows at hotels are two of the main concern s of sustainable tourism . This study particula rly focuses on tourist consumpti on and shopping behavior. The shopping behavior of tourists differs from that of local residents . Sensory feeling s , exotic environment , as well as utilitarian value influence tourist shopping behavior. Hence, destination marketing organizations should iden tify tourists’ perceived value with regards to shopping. However, few studies have investigated the perceived value held by tourists toward shopping. Therefore, the current study attempts to investigate tourists’ perceived value (i.e., emotional value, soc ial value, functional value in terms of performance, and functional value in terms of price). Through convenience sampling, 708 usable samples were collected in the summer of 2014 in Hong Kong. Findings reveal that functional value in terms of price is the most influential factor , w hereas social value is the least influential factor from the perspective of tourists . These findings may contribute to the creation and implementation of effective marketing strateg ies for DMOs , and may provide implications to lo cal residents by highlighting the remaining aspect to be enhanced.

Television (TV) drama/film production towns have been mushrooming in Korea to cater for the increasing popularity of film tourism. Most of these towns have been constructed by local governments to stimulate economic development, enhance the image and awareness of the region, and to fulfill the political desires of the local government officials. However, in the last 15 years, 34 towns have been established, which has led to heavy competition for film tourists and in attracting subsequent TV drama and film productions. Consequently, most of the towns are currently experiencing financial difficulties and are exploring effective measures to maintain their popularity. In this study, film tourists’ perceptions of TV drama/film production towns were analyzed using a structured survey method. The survey data were analyzed using paired t -tests and importance– performance (I–P) analyses. The results reveal that the film tourists’ had different perceptions of the I–P of the products and services provided by the towns. In particular, their perceptions of I–P displayed distinct gap patterns in relation to various socio-demographic and travel-related variables.

Shopping has become a determinant factor , which affect s destination choice. The emerging concept of shopping tourism is defined as “a contemporary form of tourism fostered by individuals for whom purchasing goods outside of their usual environment is a determining factor in their decision to travel” ( The United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2014 , p.13 ). Shopping is one of the oldest tourist activities ( Genuens, Vantomme, & Brengman, 2004 ) and commonly accounts for the majo r expenditure of travel budget s (Murphy, Moscardo, Benckendorff, & Pearce, 2011). Thus, d estination marketing organizations (DMOs) devote tremendous efforts into promoting destination s as convenient places to maximize the arrival of shopping tourists . Generally , people are driven to participate in reasonable shopping behavior without e xception . R egulatory focus theory (RFT) , first proposed by Higgins (1997) , claims that people have two distinct motivation system s , namely , promotion focus and prevention focus. The se two self - regulatory motivational systems are involved in the decision - making process and are focused on self - regulation toward desired end - states. Hosmer (1995) found that trust is related to promotion focus. Hence, building trust toward shopping destination s is expected to positively affect tourist s’ shopping behaviors. In other words, shopping tourists are likely to choose trustworthy shopping destination s, driving them to adjust their promotion focus (i.e. , hopes and accomplishments in shopping) and prevention focus (i.e. , security and safety in shopping ) to arrive at a re asonable decision. This idea reflects the natural human tendency to avoid or minimize risks (Chen & Dhillon, 2003). McKnight and Chervany (2002) viewed trust as a mechanism for reducing the complexity of human behavior in a situation that involves uncertainty. From this perspective, trust performs the important function of reducing the complexity of information and the perceptions of risk in a given transaction. Despite the importance of trust in promoting shopping destination s , no research has yet to fully explore this topic . S pecifically, the underly ing dimensions of shopping destination trust and the most influential dimensions in forming trustworthy shopping destination s have not been identified. Therefore, the purpose of th e current study is to develop and validate the measurement properties of a scale , which measures shopping destination trust. A multi - staged development study was conducted to develop a measurement instrument for shopping destination trust . The procedure suggested by Churchill (1979) for developing measures of marketing constructs and the recommendations of Hinkins (1995) for improving the scale development process provide d guidance for th e present research. In addition, the guidelines provided by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) fo r establishing measurement reliabilities , as well as previous scale development studies , were also referenced (Wong & Wan, 2013; Choi & Sirakaya, 2005; Kim, Ritchie, & 1 McCormick, 2012). With regard s the specification of construct domains and generation of initial items, a set of 48 items related to the 11 construct domains (i.e., “ benevolence , ” “ integrity , ” “ competence , ” “ predictability , ” “ ability , ” “ transactional security , ” “ informational content , ” “ reputation , ” “ prod uct , ” “ liking , ” and “ risk avoidance ” ) was initially generated from a review of existing research on shopping and trust. Modifications were made to the items in each dimension in the context of shopping tourism. By refining the instrument, 48 final items were obtained for data collection. The target sample was shopping tourist s . Two rigorous screening questions were selected based on the definition of shopping tourism (UNWTO, 2014). Through convenience sampling, 708 usable sample s were collected in the summer of 2014 in Hong Kong. Subsequently , purification of the measurement scale (e.g., exploratory factor analysis), assessment of the latent structure (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis), and scale validation (e.g., validation of the developed scale and invariance tests) were conducted separate ly . The results reveal that shopping destination trust consists of ten dimensions , namely: “ benevolence , ” “ integrity , ” “ competence , ” “ predictability , ” “ability , ” “ transactional security , ” “ reputation , ” “ prod uct , ” “liking , ” and “risk avoidance . ” In particular, the results confirm that “ability” is the most influential dimension that influences shopping destination trust , followed by “competence” and “integrity . ” The results are consistent with those of previous stud ies on shopping and trust in th e marketing context ( Zhou & Tian, 2010; Gefen & Straub, 2004; Gefen, Karahanna, & Straub, 2006). The current study contributes to the establishment of a new construct, namely, shopping destination trust. Considering that no previous research has attempted to investigate the dimensions of shopping destination trust, this study is expected to shed light on potential research topics in the field of shopping tourism. Furthermore, the findings from the current study do not only fill the ga ps from previous studies on shopping tourism, but also provide recommendations for DMOs.

The topic of work-to-family is not new to researchers or practitioners , but what is not yet known is what affects the degree to which people are tolerant of work to family interruptions, and whether this matters for individual and organizational outcomes. In this paper , building on a previous measure of work - family interruption behaviors we develop th e construct “tolerance for work-to-family interruptions” (TWFI) defined as “the ability to handle un planned and unexpected work to family interruptions without feeling bothered.” B ased on conservation of resources theory we postulate - and find support for - the antecedents and consequences of TWFI tested on a sample of 626 supervisor - subordinate dyads in two organizations in El Salvador. Both work - family friendly culture and supervisor behaviors enhance tolerance for work - family interruptions. Such tole rance also leads to greater satisfaction with work - family balance, work engagement and job performance. Th e relationship s between tolerance, satisfaction with work - family balance and work engagement are stronger for people who report more (rather than less) actual interrupting behaviors. Implications for research and practice are discussed.