bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Higher tourism education in English – where and why?
Authors: Maggi Rico , Padurean Loredana 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe future growth of international tourism is challenged by concerns of political instability, safety, socio‐economics and environmental impact. Furthermore, globalization has increased competition in tourism markets, and destinations are exposed to tough price competition on homogenized products by rivals worldwide. Given these challenges and the desire by locales for sustainable tourism development, human resource development is critical to the success of tourism in many markets. As countries and regions invest more in higher education for tourism, many of them seem to be launching these programs in English to broaden their market appeal. However, the market for higher tourism education in English (HTEE) is highly competitive and progressively global, so launching a program in English opens a school to greater competition as a price for reaching a wider audience. The purpose of this paper is to look at how tourism, wealth and higher education are linked, and how the location of HTEE is related to the importance and role of tourism in a country.Design/methodology/approachThis research focuses on master programs in tourism taught in English. Starting from the current location of programs it develops two scenarios of the future spatial distribution of higher education in tourism in an increasingly global and competitive market.FindingsIn a first scenario, one where students are more mobile than teachers, programs will be concentrated in a few wealthy countries, which are also important tourism countries. In the alternative scenario, programs and teachers will follow students and, consequentially, distribution of higher education as well as tourism development and wealth will be distributed in a more equitable way.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited to a set of graduate programs in tourism taught in English. Future research should expand the data set to bachelor degrees as well as programs in national languages.Originality/valueThis paper provides useful information on how tourism, wealth and higher education are linked, and how the location of HTEE is related to the importance and role of tourism in a country.
Development of a manufacturing flexibility hierarchy through factor and cluster analysis
Authors: Larso Dwi , Doolen Toni , Hacker Marla 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe ability of production organizations to respond quickly to changes in the market with new products requires flexibility. The relationship between manufacturing flexibility and the performance of organizations in new product development is not well characterized. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a flexibility model focused on new product performance in manufacturing organizations empirically in one industrial sector.Design/methodology/approachHypothesized relationships between manufacturing flexibility, new product type, and new product performance are empirically tested using survey data from 273 companies, representing a range of US electronic manufacturers.FindingsFactor and cluster analysis identifies eight distinct flexibility dimensions and a hierarchy among these dimensions. The relationships between the identified flexibility dimensions and new product performance, as tested through correlation analyses, are found to be dependent on the type of new product development.Research limitations/implicationsOverall, this study highlights the complexity of the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and new product performance. This study is conducted in a specific sector, so the results cannot be generalized. More complex mathematical models, requiring a larger data set, would be helpful in further separating out direct and indirect effects of variables, such as new product type, on the relationship between flexibility and performance.Practical implicationsWith multiple dimensions of flexibility, organizational leaders must choose the dimension(s) that is/are most appropriate to develop. This study helps provide insight into which dimensions of flexibility a particular plant should focus on, given a particular type of new product.Originality/valueThe study has made a significant contribution by identifying the dimensions of flexibility related to new product performance and in proposing a hierarchical structure for these dimensions. This study has also made a contribution by providing empirical support for the role of new product type as a moderator in the flexibility/performance relationship.
Value stream classification
Authors: Christopher Martin , Towill Denis R. , Aitken James , Childerhouse Paul 
Published: April 2009

PurposeIn the twenty‐first century business scenario, most organisations supply a range of products to multiple markets, so participate in several often quite different supply chains. Just as the linear chain is a simplification of a supply network, the single channel is a simplification of the true complexity many organisations face. When all products are pushed down a single channel, they are paced by the slowest and customers are charged an average price resulting in many being underserved. Manifestly, for most businesses “one size fits all” is not a viable option in delivery pipeline design and operation. This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachTraditionally, the requisite number of delivery pipelines operated by a business is determined by “hunch”, as is the range of products flowing down each channel to the marketplace. The information technology (IT) revolution, which in turn has spawned the “analytic corporation” enables pipeline selection and product matching to be placed on a more formal footing. In order to enable the tailoring of value stream pipelines to markets five classification variables are proposed. These are duration of product life cycle (D), delivery window (W), annual volume (or value) (V1), product variety (V2) and demand variability (V3).FindingsThrough the use of case studies drawn from real‐world situations, the authors are able to highlight the practical value of using appropriate taxonomies to identify appropriate supply chain design strategies. A framework for the implementation of a scheme for value stream classification is proposed.Practical implicationsThe proposed analysis, design, and implementation methodology is summarised in flow diagram format. Emphasis is placed on the formation of a “natural group” task force to execute this programme. Production, sales, logistics, and marketing are all essential “players” therein.Originality/valueIt is established that the DWV3 classification system is suitable for framing pipeline performance improvement programmes. By exploiting the “analytic corporation” IT capability, the system has a dynamic role in determination of channel switching as products progress through their individual life cycle phases.
The impact of ICT‐enabled offshoring announcements on share prices
Authors: Daniel Elizabeth , Kodwani Devendra , Datta Sanjukta 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of announcements regarding information and communication technologies (ICTs)‐enabled offshoring on the share prices of public companies.Design/methodology/approachThe study is carried out by means of an event study.FindingsThe finding from this research is that investors do not tend to reward offshoring announcements. It is most likely that the value of the firm will be perceived as unchanged or if there is a reaction, it is most likely to reduce the value of the firm. A positive relation between size of firm and the size of the offshoring contract is found. Also, US investors are found to be more likely to react negatively than UK investors.Research limitations/implicationsThis study extends the use of event studies in the information systems domain to ICT‐enabled offshoring. Owing to the relatively nascent state of offshoring, and consistent with previous event studies, the data set used in this study is relatively modest.Practical implicationsManagers in many types of organisations are currently undertaking or considering offshoring, this study will enable them to understand the possible reactions of shareholders and other stakeholders.Originality/valueThis study provides an empirical contribution by undertaking the first event study of offshoring announcements. It is also one of the very few event studies that considers both UK and US‐based companies. Its use of transaction cost economics perspective also adds to the theoretical understanding of offshoring, by demonstrating that investors appear to consider increased transaction costs involved in offshoring will outweigh lower purchasing or production costs.
Practice‐oriented toolkits for virtual communities of practice
Authors: Akoumianakis Demosthenes 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the collaborative practices of virtual teams carrying out knowledge‐based work and the tools required/used to assemble “collective” artefacts.Design/methodology/approachThe vast majority of recent work on communities of practice is devoted to community management (i.e. discovering, building, and maintaining communities), dismissing or undermining community practices and how they are technologically mediated (i.e. the practice‐specific tools and artefacts involved). This paper investigates existing practices and makes use of scenarios to envision new distributed collective practices in a designated application domain. The instruments used include both empirical tools (i.e. survey of current practice and expert interviews) and analytical tools (i.e. scenarios of use, walkthroughs, and virtual prototyping) to provide insight towards the design of practice‐oriented toolkits.FindingsThe proposed approach is validated in the context of an electronic village of local interest with a thematic focus on regional tourism, highlighting the key role of “collective” knowledge management in information‐based industries whose products are non‐material (intangible) and knowledge is central to gaining competitive advantage. The results include a general model for practice‐oriented toolkits conceived of as separate software components from (but interoperable to) the community support system and devised to establish a place for engaging in the practice the community is about. This model is then used to build an operational toolkit for assembling vacation packages by cross‐organization virtual communities of practice.Practical implicationsVirtual communities of practice (or partnerships) necessitate smooth integration of community management and practice‐specific tasks and tools. Community management tasks can be supported by augmenting capabilities of existing community portals to allow for community registration, role undertaking, declaration of virtual assets, etc. Practice‐oriented tasks should be designed in such a way so as to capture and accommodate domain‐specific vocabulary.Originality/valueModel‐based techniques and domain‐specific design languages are used as the unifying mechanism (i.e. software factory) for integrating community management and practice‐oriented artefacts. These techniques are designed and implemented into a software platform so as to facilitate the systematic accumulation and reuse of knowledge towards the construction of collective artefacts.
Lessons learned from performance management systems implementations
Authors: de Waal André A. , Counet Harold 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the main problems that can be encountered during the implementation and use of a performance management system (PMS).Design/methodology/approachProblems encountered during the implementation and use of a PMS were collected from the literature and put into a survey which was sent to 31 experts in performance management (PM). These experts gave their opinion on the frequency, impact and solvability of the listed problems as they encountered these in practice.FindingsThe study shows that the failure rate of PM implementations has decreased in the past decade from 70 to 56 percent, and that the most severe problems organizations encounter are: lack of top management commitment; not having a PM culture; PM getting a low priority or its use being abandoned after a change of management; management putting low priority on the implementation; and people not seeing (enough) benefit from PM.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation is that the number of experts could be higher in order to get an even broader view on the main problems.Practical implicationsThe practical implication of the study is that management can now better prepare itself for the issues to be expected while introducing PMSs in the organization.Originality/valueThe need for an efficient and effective PMSs has increased over the last decade and the successful implementation and use of these systems has become of paramount importance to organizations. Unfortunately, until now only scattered information was available in the literature about the problems that can be expected during the implementation and use processes. Even the failure rate, which is often mentioned in the literature has never been substantiated. This paper gives, for the first time, a systematic overview of the main problems to be expected, and a more accurate failure rate of PMSs.
Paper assets, real debts
Authors: Kallis Giorgos , Martinez‐Alier Joan , Norgaard Richard B. 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThis paper sets out to investigate the potential contribution of the inter‐disciplinary field of ecological economics to the explanation of the current economic crisis. The root of the crisis is the growing disjuncture between the real economy of production and the paper economy of finance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors trace the epistemological origins of this disjuncture to the myths of economism – a mix of academic, popular and political beliefs that served to explain, rationalise and perpetuate the current economic system.FindingsThe authors recommend ending with economism and developing new collective and discursive processes for understanding and engaging with ecological‐economic systems.Originality/valueThe authors embrace the notion of sustainable de‐growth: an equitable and democratic transition to a smaller economy with less production and consumption.
The global financial crisis: an institutional theory analysis
Authors: Riaz Suhaib 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThis paper seeks to provide insights into the current global financial crisis from an institutional theory perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents the development of key concepts using institutional theory, grounded in a discussion of the context of the current global financial crisis.FindingsThe interplay of financial industry organizations and formal and informal institutions is key to understanding the creation of the crisis.Research limitations/implicationsThe treatment is brief but serves to provoke further research on the global financial crisis through applying and extending new institutional theory.Practical implicationsFundamental aspects of the crisis need to be understood with respect to the organizational‐institutional interplay involving the financial industry. This would help to reveal the general pattern of such crises and also point towards what needs to be taken into account for potential solutions.Originality/valueThe paper has value for researchers as it opens up a discussion of the current crisis from an institutional theory perspective. Fresh concepts introduced here could be extended further and inform institutional theory in general. The paper has value for policy makers and practitioners in helping them understand the fundamentals of the organizational‐institutional interplay underlying the current crisis.
Wrong assumptions in the financial crisis
Authors: Aalbers Manuel B. 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show how some of the assumptions about the current financial crisis are wrong because they misunderstand what takes place in the mortgage market.Design/methodology/approachThe paper discusses four wrong assumptions: one related to regulation, one to leveraging, one to subprime lending and one to predatory lending. It briefly discusses some policy implications.FindingsThe role of the state in the mortgage market is more complex than suggested by those who blame the state for not doing anything. The concept of leveraging can explain, at least in part, why the losses in financial markets are bigger than the losses in the housing market. Many subprime loans were sold to prime borrowers. Subprime lending was not designed to increase homeownership rates, but to fuel profits by exploiting vulnerable borrowers.Practical implicationsIt is too easy to argue that everyone made mistakes; most borrowers cannot be blamed for being sold risky, overpriced loans. A rescue plan is needed for defaulting borrowers and those already in foreclosure.Originality/valueThe paper does not present new research, but brings together research that demonstrates that the roots of the crisis in the mortgage market are in many ways different from what is suggested by professionals and journalists alike.
Regulation and subprime turmoil
Authors: Jain Arvind K. 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe global economy has entered what appears to be a very serious financial crisis for reasons other than force majeure. While the current focus has to be on preventing a repeat of the Great Depression, efforts must also be made to understand why the crisis came about in the first place. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the regulators should have known what the risks were and that these risks were large and systemic, and should have concluded that actions were required to prevent a serious global crisis.Design/methodology/approachThe article analyzes the developments in the US mortgage market to assess whether the chances of a crisis in the period before the crisis could have been assessed to be too remote to warrant concern.FindingsThe evidence seems quite clear that, given the assessments of potential consequences of previous episodes in which concerted actions had to be taken to prevent the collapse of the global financial system, the regulators of the US economy should have taken steps long before the onslaught of chains of collapse of financial institutions that began in the summer of 2007.Originality/valueIt is hoped that analysis such as this will lead to improvement of regulations of financial markets, reducing chances of future crises of such proportions.
A time to return to Keynes
Authors: Pressman Steven 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThis paper seeks compare the current financial and economic problems with the problems facing the world economy in the 1930s.Design/methodology/approachThe paper argues that the Great Depression and the current problems have similar causes – excessive speculation, leading to a financial collapse that then results in an economic collapse. It then looks at the work of John Maynard Keynes to help solve the current problems.FindingsThe paper advocates a large public works program plus a number of policies to help US homeowners and thereby stabilize housing prices.Originality/valueThe paper provides a way out of the current economic and financial problems, and a way to avoid another Great Depression.
The subscription‐cover‐based routeing algorithm in content‐based publish/subscribe
Authors: Hong Liang Yuan , ChangGuo Guo , Peng Zou 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe publish/subscribe paradigm is useful for content diffusion in the internet. The purpose of this paper is to propose subscription covering to reduce the size of routeing table and notification matching time.Design/methodology/approachThe paper proposes a necessary and sufficient condition of correct routeing table configuration when using SSCBR algorithm.FindingsExperiments show that both SSCBR and RSCBR can reduce the size of routeing table, network traffic and time.Research limitations/implicationsAll these experiments are based on high speed wireline network. For wireless network, the results may be different.Originality/valueThe paper proposes a necessary and sufficient condition of correct routeing table configuration when using SSCBR algorithm and can easily validate the correctness of brokers' routeing table through it. Because RSCBR calculates less subscription covering relation, its performance in network traffic and average notification processing time may be better than SSCBR in certain scenarios.
PEGASUS: designing a system for supporting group activity
Authors: Kyprianidou Maria , Demetriadis Stavros , Pombortsis Andreas , Karatasios George 
Published: April 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the design and first results of the integration of a web‐based system person‐centred group‐activity support system (PEGASUS) in university instruction, as a means for advancing person‐centred learning by supporting group activity. The PEGASUS is expected to help students and teachers in two distinct objectives: enhancing metacognition (students and teachers are supported to identify their learning and teaching preferences, which in turn is used as a framework for reflection), and group formation (the system suggests homogeneous or heterogeneous workgroups, supporting also teacher‐students negotiations of the final group synthesis).Design/methodology/approachFirst, a theoretical framework is built to reflect the process of transforming the principles for learner‐centred learning into a pedagogical model which becomes the basis for defining the PEGASUS specifications. Then, qualitative field evidence is provided from the initial integration of the system into the teaching process to support students' group activity.FindingsFrom the pilot testing of PEGASUS it is evident that learning style‐based group formation might not be acceptable to all students in the typical classroom setting where students already know each other. The early implementation data indicate that not every student might accept the theory‐based grouping suggestions of the instructor.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is limited to qualitative and preliminary results from undergraduate as well as postgraduate students.Practical implicationsSystems like PEGASUS can initiate fruitful discussions among students and teachers on the role of learning styles in learning. However, group activity is a complex socio‐cognitive phenomenon that cannot be approached simply on the basis of students' learning styles. Still, such a system can help identify how students' learning styles can be of significance under certain conditions.Originality/valueThe paper describes the development of a web‐based system for personalised learning and system integration in everyday teaching.