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Employee attitude has often been neglected in most quality endeavors. Both consultants and management hurry to get the project done and omit to measure and manage the soft aspects of the event. The task‐orientation approach should be augmented by the people elements. This article illustrates how a company in Hong Kong applied a longitudinal employee attitude survey as a monitoring tool in its journey towards acquiring the ISO certificate. Quality success drivers were found to be the key determinants for the perceived strengths of the company.

This paper outlines the action learning approach in adult education. To begin, it cites some definitions of action learning and describes the characteristics of this andragogical model through contrasting the common barriers and the benefits. The concept of questioning insight is dealt with in the learning equation. The social aspects of learning from each other in a set environment have been emphasized. With the advent of new technology, the future of action learning is highly promising to the learners, their employers, the education providers and the society. Some useful Web sites are included for those who want to approach learning more about the action learning approach.

This paper attempts to deploy a systematic and structural approach to examine Macau's strengths and weaknesses and to scan its external opportunities and threats. A fresh way to quantify the extent of perceived opportunities and threats is introduced here. This is adopted and modified from the quality management tool box, i.e. the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) and success mode and effects analysis (SMEA).

The internal factors, i.e. its strengths and weaknesses are systematically and structurally gauged using a Likert scale of 0 to 10 (i.e. 0 representing least important or least well performed … to 10 representing most important and best performed).

Following the matching of internal factors with the external factors in the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, a list of meaningful responses is identified as possible strategies for the Macau SAR Government. The SWOT analysis is simple to use yet powerful and flexible in responding to changes in the external environment and should be useful to organizations both in the commercial sector and government machinery.

This innovative and structured strategic formulation approach is useful to both business practitioners and management consultants.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the accurate cause and effect relationships among strategic objectives and also to demonstrate how decision makers can be guided in the process of defining quantitative strategic target values in the framework of balanced scorecard (BSC) and performance measurement system.

Based on the proposed method in this research, after determining strategic objectives and developing an initial strategy map according to decision makers’ opinions, simultaneous equations system (SES) was used to determine the significance of the relationships among strategic objectives in higher perspectives of the BSC and corresponding strategic objectives in lower perspectives. Afterward, desirable values for performance measures were determined based on the equations and relationships obtained through SES and were optimized by goal programming method.

By applying the proposed method, a clearer picture of the associations among strategic objectives is obtained and the influence of strategic objectives on one another is determined. Afterward, optimal values for strategic objectives are determined to achieve the organization’s goals.

This paper proposes a framework for constructing a strategy map and setting quantitative targets in the framework of BSC. Indeed, this paper presents a case study to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach. However, SES technique requires a greater amount of data to generate more accurate results. Although the advent of the Information Age has forced organizations’ decision makers to provide sufficient information and data for business analysis, the data requirements are met.

The presented quantitative approach is a supporting approach for improving decision makers’ opinions and enabling them to reach a more accurate picture of the relationships, valuing strategic objectives and achieving strategic goals. This research also presents a case study to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach. The application and implication of the proposed method in banking services show that the contributions of the paper are not only theoretical, but also practical.

The proposed method provides a novel approach for determining the most appropriate targets and applies a comprehensive and scientific model together with decision makers’ opinions and experiences and has two main contributions: first, the associations among strategic objectives are investigated and obtained in an effective way by conducting the SES for the first time in the framework of BSC. Second, quantitative targets have been determined to help in achieving the long-term goals. This task has been accomplished through a combination of SES, the three-stage least squares regression analysis and optimization by using weighted goal programming method.

Researches staff attitudes during the introduction of an ISO certification quality programme. The company was a listed public property investment and development company. The technique employed was a self‐completed anonymous questionnaire on a longitudinal basis. Explores the perceived benefits of ISO certification; the possible drawbacks; the difficulties in introduction; and the prerequisites for success. Finds that ISO certification is perceived to improve performance but that top management support and commitment had fallen. Significant improvements after certification were seen to exist in management ability; quality systems; servicing; training of employees; business reputation and personnel management.

The hybrid of the balanced scorecard, SWOT analysis and quality function deployment creates a pragmatic approach for managerial and consultant practitioners to translate vague strategy into action. Sun Tzu's Art of War is further incorporated to develop a more structured strategic formulation framework. Nevertheless, many modern practitioners are, in fact, unfamiliar with this profound principle of strategy that was written some 2,400 years back. Despite the establishment of a theoretical framework, so far there have not been many published papers about the pragmatic implementation and holistic strategy development. Thus, a case study, in the form of a strategy workshop of a professional institute in Hong Kong, has been used to delineate the aforesaid translation of strategy.

Conjoint analysis has emerged as a contemporary research technique to reveal consumers’ preference towards choosing a particular restaurant. Through some focus group discussions, a list of restaurant attributes was identified as important for restaurant‐goers in deciding where to dine. While the research was based on Hong Kong experience, the research technique can be generalised to restaurant choices in other countries. It is possible to segment the restaurant market by different meal purposes (i.e. family meal, business meal and tourists) and employee groups (i.e. service sector, hotels and floating restaurants). The concept of decentring was applied in the study to help reveal restaurant preferences as perceived by the respondents standing in the shoes of others.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the perceptions of visitors in terms of multiple aspects of smart cities to allow wise decisions to be made about smart tourist destinations by municipal governments and tourism authorities.

This study takes a sample of inbound visitors (n=205) from Hong Kong as an empirical questionnaire-based survey on visitors’ perceptions of these smart city attributes, which are collected from literature, and framed in Cohen’s Smart City Wheel.

This paper identifies the distinctive factors for branding Hong Kong as a smart city. The results from the factor analysis identify four factors for determining what a smart city is from the perspective of visitors, namely, the quality of a smart society: energy consumption in an urban environment, smart city governance and smart city livelihood. The first two factors further become the determinants of a successful smart city brand considered by visitors, which contribute to their locational decisions and thus the strategies and policies of smart destination branding.

The results obtained can serve as insights for tourism policy makers and destination marketers when considering significant information and communication technology, or other smart and sustainable attributes for city branding (e.g. Buhalis and Amaranggana, 2014; Marine-Roig and Anton Clavé, 2015), as well as common investment and resource allocation for shared benefits in similar metropolises.

The smartness factors represent important dimensions of urban smartness as prioritized areas for further development, innovation and marketing of tourism industries and enterprises in Hong Kong, as a mature urban destination incorporating the branding of a proposed smart district as a strategy of urban development.

Smart urban development and tourism development have increasingly become inseparable, especially when visitors utilize cities as tourist destinations but share other urban resources and spaces with local citizens. Unlike the development of smart tourist attractions, smart tourist destinations should have a wider scope of smartness. A smart tourist destination may carry similar and overlapping characteristics of smart cities, which may be interpreted by visitors and may eventually affect their perceived image of a city.

Delays occur mostly in the construction process of many projects, which can have a consequent effect on the overall performance of the project in areas such as profitability, efficiency and safety. This study aims to suggest a structure that can be applied to manage construction projects effectively and, thus, to reduce delays. The integrated balanced scorecard (BSC) and quality function deployment (QFD) framework proposed in the present study enabled the identification and ranking of the objectives of the financial perspective and the enablers of construction delay mitigation. This will help construction industry professionals prioritize the enabling factors that influence the financial perspective, thereby helping them focus on the achievement of the most important ones which subsequently results in efficiency. Consequently, more tasks are accomplished with the use of less time and resources as the actions tend to be more narrowly focused on the achievement of the most important factors such as client and contractor-related factors, as opposed to the low-value adding factors.

A literature review was conducted to determine the essential factors that would help resolve or reduce delays. A total of 41 mitigation factors (seven financial objectives and 36 enabler objectives) were identified and categorized into four BSC perspectives: financial, client, contractor and project management team, and innovation and learning. Two management tools, the BSC and QFD, were used to develop the system based on the mitigation factors defined.

The results of this study show that the most significant factors affecting the achievement of the financial objectives of the project are mainly customer-related factors, accompanied by factors related to contractors and project management teams. With the fishbone diagram and cause and effect analysis, the proposed BSC and QFD system provides a long-term approach for all stakeholders to help professionals in the construction industry prioritize and reduce delays more effectively. Moreover, the findings of the present study highlight the utility of the integrated BSC and QFD framework in quantifying the strengths of association of different objectives of the financial perspective and the enablers of construction delay mitigation.

The contribution of this paper to the body of knowledge is the proposed integrated structure for BSC and QFD that can serve as a comprehensive and structural approach to rating the essential enabling delay mitigation factors based on the magnitude of their effects on the financial performance of the project. The proposed framework can be considered a novel tool since this is the first integrated BSC and QFD framework for construction delay mitigation. Finally, the proposed BSC and QFD framework, along with the fishbone diagram and cause and effect analysis, provides a long-term strategy for all stakeholders to mitigate delays. Thus, the proposed integrated BSC and QFD framework can serve as a systematic and structural approach for measuring the strength of influence of the enablers of delay mitigation against the financial perspective.

This study aims to present a systematic review of smart tourism articles using a meta-synthesis method. Effective systematic reviews are essential for assisting stakeholders in implementing smart destinations. A systematic comprehension of studies on smart tourism is needed regarding the various components of smart tourism destinations, the metrics to map these components and their expected results. This study creates a framework for understanding how smart tourism destinations are theorized and developed.

Based on the meta-synthesis approach, this study collects, analyzes and synthesizes relevant research in smart tourism published in online databases by following a predetermined review protocol.

This study contributes to the discourse on smart tourism destinations by increasing the knowledge on the subject of smart destinations in regard to different categories. The selected articles were analyzed according to the proposed research questions and classified into three main categories: components, measurement and outputs. This study presents a new archetype for developing smart destinations and addresses efforts to bridge the gap in this research field.

This paper is noteworthy for stakeholders because it provides a comprehensive vision into the components that influence the growth of smart destinations. The advantage of the proposed methodology is that it creates a framework for understanding how smart destinations are theorized. Furthermore, it is helpful to use qualitative methodologies that efficiently allow the analysis of related literature and that also offer conceptual insights.

The findings provide information that can be used to help shape a fully conceptualized understanding of the smart destinations concept and can also prove important in providing a guide for policymakers and stakeholders in the tourism industry who seek to intelligently develop tourism destinations.

本研究基于综合集成方法, 遵循预先设计的回顾方案, 收集、分析和综合线上资料库中相关智慧旅游的研究成果

本研究旨在运用综合集成方法对智慧旅游文献进行系统的回顾。有效的系统的综述对协助相关利益者实现智慧旅游目的地至关重要。有必要系统地理解智能旅游的研究, 包括智能旅游目的地的各个要素, 映射这些要素的指标及其预期结果。本研究为理解智慧旅游目的地如何理论化和发展提供了框架。

本研究通过增加不同类别的智慧旅游目的地的相关知识, 推动对智慧旅游目的地的探讨。根据提出的研究问题和三大主要类别：组成要素、测量和产出, 对遴选的文章进行分析。本研究为开发智慧旅游目的地提供了新的典例, 并致力于这一研究领域的空白。

本文对利益相关者是重要的, 因为它为影响智慧旅游目的地增长的要素提供了一个综合性视角。此方法的优点在于为理解智慧旅游目的地理论化提供框架。此外, 本文有助于运用定性方法有效地分析相关文献, 并提供概念化见解。

研究结果提供的信息可用于帮助形成对智慧旅游目的地概念的全面的概念化理解, 也对旅游业中寻求智能化开发旅游目的地的决策者和利益相关者提供指导具有重要意义。

Basándose en el enfoque de la metasíntesis, este estudio recoge, analiza y sintetiza las investigaciones pertinentes en materia de turismo inteligente publicadas en bases de datos en línea siguiendo un protocolo de revisión predeterminado.

Este estudio tiene como objetivo presentar una revisión sistemática de los artículos de turismo inteligente utilizando un método de meta-síntesis. Las revisiones sistemáticas eficaces son esenciales para ayudar a los interesados a poner en práctica los destinos inteligentes. Se necesita una comprensión sistemática de los estudios sobre turismo inteligente en relación con los diversos componentes de los destinos de turismo inteligente, las métricas para trazar el mapa de estos componentes y sus resultados esperados. Este estudio crea un marco para comprender cómo se teorizan y desarrollan los destinos turísticos inteligentes.

El presente estudio contribuye al discurso sobre los destinos turísticos inteligentes al aumentar el conocimiento sobre el tema de los destinos inteligentes en relación con diferentes categorías. Los artículos seleccionados fueron analizados de acuerdo con las preguntas de investigación propuestas y clasificados en tres categorías principales: componentes, medición y resultados. Este estudio presenta un nuevo arquetipo para el desarrollo de los destinos inteligentes y aborda los esfuerzos para salvar la brecha en este campo de investigación.

Este artículo es digno de mención para los interesados porque ofrece una visión global de los componentes que influyen en el crecimiento de los destinos inteligentes. La ventaja de la metodología propuesta es que crea un marco para comprender cómo se teorizan los destinos inteligentes. Además, es útil para utilizar metodologías cualitativas que permitan analizar eficazmente la literatura conexa y que también ofrezcan perspectivas conceptuales.

Este estudio ofrece una revisión sistemática de la investigación más reciente publicada sobre turismo inteligente. Los resultados de este estudio podrían ser importantes para proporcionar una guía a los responsables políticos y a los actores del sector turístico que buscan desarrollar inteligentemente sus destinos turísticos. Los resultados del análisis sistemático pueden servir de punto de partida útil para futuras investigaciones en este ámbito.