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Conceptual aspects of this research aim to review issues and to introduce new ways to employ importance‐performance analysis (IPA), also called action‐grid analysis (AGA), in formulating valid research. The purpose of the exercises is facilitating understanding how a variety of matters are important for research being valid.

IPA/AGA, different types of IPA/AGA, and validity issues for these are introduced. Pursuing two types of IPA/AGA, based on different assumptions and thus distinct validity criteria, reinforces the need for new thinking regarding valid applications of IPA/AGA. Practically oriented training exercises reinforce understanding concepts introduced. Possible answers to exercises encourage thinking about matters that directly affect validity of actual research.

Unless IPA/AGA research is well conceived, properly executed, and soundly analysed, implications derived may be misleading. Training exercises show the reader values and pitfalls of considering IPA/AGA in formulating practically oriented research.

A limitation of the research is that detail results are only presented for two of at least five types of IPA/AGA.

This paper contributes to the overall understanding of the valid use of IPA/AGA as a tool in research. The paper also facilitates using IPA/AGA in teaching about research.

One of the challenges in global sustainable tourism development is knowledge flow and sharing among development assistance donors and recipients in developing countries. This chapter integrates the concepts of knowledge management and consensus building to construct a virtual network, leveraging information communication technologies for identifying global tourism priorities and sharing knowledge for sustainable development. The factors and relationships that influence the effective use of professional virtual communities for knowledge sharing are identified and examined. They are integrated for proposing a conceptual framework to study effective knowledge sharing in virtual communities for global sustainable tourism development.

This article seeks to introduce the concept of the Grid‐GMPLS control plane architecture with focus on new services, models, and interoperability issues of Grid‐GMPLS (G²MPLS) and GMPLS control planes. The purpose of this activity is to design, implement and test extensions of the GMPLS Control Plane that can enable the paradigm of a G²MPLS network.

The approach deploys extended GMPLS implementations aiming to facilitate bandwidth provisioning to Grid users.

G²MPLS is a Network Control Plane architecture that implements the concept of Grid Network Services. GNS is a service that allows the provisioning of network and Grid resources in a single‐step through a set of integrated procedures. By providing a unified network/Grid infrastructure the control plane can adapt to the demands of applications having intensive requirements on both computational and network resources.

The project delivers the prototype implementation of G²MPLS. Consideration should be given to involving the vendors of the optical equipment in the development process to incorporate the project findings into their operating systems.

The G²MPLS protocol stack has been designed to be compatible with the ASON/GMPLS architecture. This could lead to possible integration of Grids in the existing operational networks, by overcoming the current limitations of Grids running over dedicated networks with their own administrative procedures.

The paper provides the description of Grid Network Infrastructures with a common and transversal Control Plane approach based on G²MPLS, in which Grid resources and optical network resources are both controlled by the same Control Plane, seamlessly spanning the different Control and Management domains of the network.

Electronic meeting facilitation (e‐facilitation) continues to be a critical success factor in the use of information technology to support face‐to‐face collaborative work. Yet researchers and practitioners continue to struggle to understand the subtleties and difficulties in the application of meeting facilitation techniques in the ‘electronic’ context. To clarify that understanding, this paper develops a new theoretical framework that examines how technology interacts with human facilitator behavior in an electronic group meeting. This framework, The Dualities of E‐Facilitation, is composed of two dualities: the Duality of Computer and Human Interaction, and the Duality of Routine and Intuitive Actions. The framework emerged from an analysis of the e‐facilitation behaviors of newly trained face‐to‐face electronic meeting facilitators.

An unreliable supply of grid electricity has a strong negative impact on industrial and commercial profitability as well as on household activities and government services that rely on electricity supply. This unreliable grid electricity could be a result of technical and security factors affecting the grid network. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of technical and security factors on the transmission and distribution of grid electricity in Uganda.

This study used the ordinary least squares (OLS) and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models to examine the effects of technical and security factors on grid electricity reliability in Uganda. The study draws upon secondary time series monthly data sourced from the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL) government utility, which transmits electricity to both distributors and grid users. Additionally, data from Umeme Limited, the largest power distribution utility in Uganda, were incorporated into the analysis.

The findings revealed that technical faults, failed grid equipment, system overload and theft and vandalism affected grid electricity reliability in the transmission and distribution subsystems of the Ugandan power grid network. The effect was computed both in terms of frequency and duration of power outages. For instance, the number of power outages was 116 and 2,307 for transmission and distribution subsystems, respectively. In terms of duration, the power outages reported on average were 1,248 h and 5,826 h, respectively, for transmission and distribution subsystems.

This paper investigates the effects of technical and security factors on the transmission and distribution grid electricity reliability, specifically focusing on frequency and duration of power outages, in the Ugandan context. It combines both OLS and ARDL models for analysis and adopts the systems reliability theory in the area of grid electricity reliability research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations for Indian hotel administrators for improving sustainability practices: environment, economic and social with respect to the supply chain members by analyzing performance dimensions and the importance attached to them.

Importance performance analysis is a tool to analyze the perception of top-level, middle-level and first-level managers in hotels. Questionnaire is developed to collect the hotel manager’s perceptions. The snowball sampling method is used for data collection.

The paper introduces specific sustainability practices, namely, environment, economic and social factors, at the interface of the tourism supply chain (TSC). This will allow the hotels to identify the importance and performance of various sustainability practices to achieve a long-term competitive advantage. The present work finds that the responding hotel managers have given highest importance to the sustainability practices within the organization and the hotel manager’s perception of sustainability practices in the TSC will vary with respect to the supply chain members.

The effort has been made to capture specific sustainability practices across the supply chain. The paper reinstates the fact that sustainability practices are not firm specific and should be practiced at the supply chain interface. The data for the study were taken from focal organizations perspective which is the hotels.

Results provide the hotel administrators to develop appropriate strategies to improve their practices and functions by analyzing their strengths and weakness regarding their tangible and intangible assets. The identified sustainability practice attributes can act as a benchmark and drive the hotel industry toward possible cost-saving conditions by prioritizing the allocation of the resources while taking care of overall performance.

Results will help the hotel administrators to identify the better sustainability practices which will reduce the negative effects and protect the Mother Nature.

The study included hotels/resorts from tourism locations: hill station, backwaters and coastal areas, specifically in the Indian context.

Whenever you run a course where you want the outcome to be a shift in perceptions, attitudes or beliefs (name a course that doesn't) you can use the Repertory Grid Technique (Repgrid) as a pre/post test to measure the extent of the shift. Even if, like me, you are primarily involved in designing and running skill courses where the outcome can be spelled out and observed in behavioural terms, the Repgrid can be used to establish whether underlying attitudes have shifted to align with newly acquired behavioural skills. This article will show you how to use the Repgrid as a way of validating any course. Rather than run the risk of confusing you by chopping and changing between different courses I shall confine my description to how I use the Repgrid to validate one particular course. The course is designed for ICL salesmen with the overall objective of getting them to be more interactively skilled. I shall not bore you with a blow by blow description of the course because it isn't relevant to this article. We only need to highlight the start and finish because that is where the Repgrid is used.

The Repertory Grid Technique [Repgrid] is an excellent way of discovering people's attitudes or beliefs. In this article I shall show you how to use the technique to conduct an attitude survey. I have used it scores of times in this way to conduct surveys on a small and large scale. The particular survey I am going to recount in this article was a medium sized one with 73 people taking part. I have chosen to use this as an example because • this particular survey was designed to establish management training needs rather than for any other purpose. If I can show you how to use the Repgrid in this context it may be extra helpful in getting you started. • the 73 Repgrids were processed manually. I have conducted larger surveys and had the results processed by computer. In this case I was especially interested to discover how feasible manual processing was. I therefore kept records of how long different stages took and will include this information in this article. Just a bit of background. The survey was commissioned by a successful manufacturing organisation who were interested in moving from autocratic to more consultative/participative ways of managing. There was some previous history of in‐company management training, particularly at foreman and supervisory levels, but none aimed specifically at developing people skills. The organisation, some four thousand strong, had a reputation for putting people under pressure but paying them over the odds. They had tight control procedures with daily reporting systems. Managers right up to the top were expected to know in detail exactly what was happening on their patch. After the usual exploratory meetings it was agreed that I should conduct a survey amongst a sample of their management levels (from foremen upwards) to • Find out what development needs people had in connection with the management of people. • Find out what current attitudes were most closely associated with effectiveness and ineffectiveness when managing people.

All industry has been facing tremendous pressure since the beginning of 2020 owing to COVID-19 crisis, including real estate construction. The research is a case study investigating challenges and action plans faced by stakeholders (developers/consultants/contractors) in real estate construction in some major cities in Indonesia. This study aims to identify and prioritize on action plans related to real estate construction stakeholders.

The study gathered challenges and action plans by distributing open questionnaire to expert to get insights in their own verbatim. Data reduction was then performed to get high-level challenges and high-level action plans. High-level action plans were then analyzed using proposed Eisenhower-simultaneous importance performance analysis (SIPA) matrix which help prioritize high-level action plans. Correlation matrix was also constructed to gain insight on relation between action plans to challenges and to three main LEAN elements (Muda, Mura and Muri). Alternative ranking method using “sum-product to 3M” approach was also performed to give complementary insights.

Ten action plans fall under category “Act now and become COVID-19 champion company.” One falls under category “prepare and invest now to gain competitive advantage,” one falls under category “external collaboration now to survive,” one falls under category “external collaboration for potential efficiency,” whereas the remaining six action plans fall under category “let-it-go” or “do-nothing.”

The study gathered only 48 and 64 respondents in its first and second questionnaires. Despite small number, the respondents are experts in their own field, and their valuable insights and responses off-set the limited number of participants. The study gives insightful action plans that can be taken by stakeholders in real-estate construction in Indonesia’s major cities analyzed by proposed Eisenhower-SIPA matrix.

The novelty of the research lies in the insights from industry experts in dealing with current COVID-19 pandemic in real-estate construction in Indonesia. Added value is also given through the use of Eisenhower-SIPA matrix.

Whenever you want to give someone feedback about how you perceive them or, get feedback about how they perceive you you can use the Repertory Grid Technique (Repgrid). This article will show you how to use the Repgrid to generate feedback amongst the members of a group. This could be useful on many occasions. For example I have used it to surface interpersonal issues amongst project teams of various kinds and with groups where differences of opinion were impairing their performance. In this article I shall concentrate on describing the way I use the Repgrid as a self‐insight exercise halfway through an interactive skills course. The aims of the exercise are • To give each course member feedback about how others perceive them so that they can build on strengths and overcome weaknesses during the second half of the course. • To give each course member some insight into what they notice about other people and how it fits in with the conclusions they reach about them. The idea is to jolt them into being both more observant and careful in reaching conclusions about people. The whole exercise takes about half a day, but that includes some group work as you will see, and could be adapted for use on any programme where issues to do with behaviour, feelings, attitudes and perceptions are high on the agenda.