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The purpose of this paper is to understand the crisis communication strategies used by the Caribbean medical tourism industry in the 2017 hurricane season, and also evaluate the quality of the disaster communication messages delivered via digital mediums.

This study includes a comprehensive, qualitative content analysis of 149 risk and crisis messages from 51 healthcare organizations distributed through digital media. The medical tourism providers (MTPs) include hospitals, medical tourism facilitators, practitioners/private physicians, specialty clinics, and dental and cosmetic providers.

Nearly half of the MTPs included in the data set delivered no post-disaster information to external audiences. The most prominent post-disaster message strategy utilized was conveying operational messages. Furthermore, an unexpected finding was the sheer magnitude of unrelated health-oriented and promotional destination marketing content disseminated before, during and after these events.

This analysis excludes internal organizational channels of communication which may have been used to communicate risk and crisis messages during these events (i.e. employee e-mails, announcements made through intercom systems, etc.). Our analysis does not include content disseminated through medical tourism forums (i.e. Realself.com, Health Traveler’s Forum, FlyerTalk Forum).

Small-scale MTPs can improve on any weaknesses through proactive planning and preparation by creating organizational goals to complete basic crisis communication training courses and in doing so support the applied professional development of disaster and crisis responders in the Caribbean region. Second, MTPs exposed to similar risks of natural disasters may use these findings for comparative analysis purposes to support their own organizational planning. Finally, this study supports the continued utility of the National Center for Food Protection & Defense guidelines for analyzing and evaluating organizational performance.

Currently much of the academic scholarship of applied disaster communication narrowly focuses on the response strategies of one organization, or analyzes one social media platform at a time (i.e. Twitter). A strength of this analysis is the inclusion of an organizational sector (i.e. Caribbean medical tourism providers) and the range of platforms from which the content was captured (e.g. websites, org. blogs and social media networks).

This study examines the prominence and congruence or “fit” between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and medical tourism providers (MTPs). In doing so, this study seeks to understand the forms of CSR commonly used in the marketing of health-care services by international MTPs.

Exploratory quantitative content analysis methods are used to examine CSR communication provided by MTPs. Descriptive statistics and analyses of variance are used to analyze the data.

Results show that 22% of MTP websites provided CSR information. There was a high degree of congruence or “fit” between the MTPs and the CSR. Furthermore, each MTP averaged between three and six CSR engagements demonstrating a commitment to not only the practice of CSR but also the stakeholders and communities who benefit.

This analysis focused on organizational websites and did not examine CSR communications delivered through alternative media channels (e.g. digital platforms, promotional brochures, print advertising, etc.).

This study adds to the CSR framework in the medical tourism context by discovering what forms of CSR are commonly used in the marketing and promotion of international health services and further analyzes the strategic communication techniques used to deliver these messages.

CSR is argued to have direct impacts on employee satisfaction, investor relations and consumer behavior; therefore, current findings may contribute to the development of measurement tools for empirical studies that test relationships between the persuasiveness of CSR messages on the attitudes of medical tourists.

Research inquiries into the CSR strategic communication practices help to identify strengths and opportunities, while informing reputation management and relationship-building practices.

Corporate Social Responsibility.

This case is suitable to be used in advanced undergraduate and MBA/MSc level.

This case is about the conflict between Prof Bakar, the new Dean of Progressive Technical University (PTU), and the lecturers teaching the social innovation course. PTU was established in 1985 to provide opportunities for rural students to pursue technical education. Both parties had differing opinions over the suitability of projects in the social innovation curriculum. Dean Bakar was adamant that CSR is charity-based and therefore not suitable for the social innovation class. As the case unfolded, it was clear that each lecturer had different views about the course – indicating the wide-spectrum of views on the relationship between CSR and social innovation as well as social entrepreneurship. The case provides opportunities to deliberate on what constitutes “social purpose,” the 17 sustainable developmental goals, the global movement of social entrepreneurship and social innovation, impact investing and harvesting, as well as indigenous wisdom. The main trigger of the case is how to resolve the conflict and come up with an improved version of the course content, as well as a comparison framework for CSR, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship.

Using this case study, the students will be able to:

• compare CSR, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship;

• understand CSR activities and explain their main features based on the given case facts;

• analyze and solve the conflict between Dean Bakar and the six social innovation lecturers;

• propose solutions on how to review the social innovation course; and

• discuss how different perceptions could affect decision-making.

compare CSR, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship;

understand CSR activities and explain their main features based on the given case facts;

analyze and solve the conflict between Dean Bakar and the six social innovation lecturers;

propose solutions on how to review the social innovation course; and

discuss how different perceptions could affect decision-making.

In other fields, like natural resources, a wide range of participatory methods have been applied, criticized and adapted trough practice. Areas such as anthropology, history or architecture have contributed to the identification of heritage values. Semi-structured interviews and cultural mapping are examples of qualitative and participative methods that have been applied already in the conservation field. Nevertheless, no framework exists to assess the effectiveness of such methods and little experience has been built up in actor’s integration within the heritage value identification process. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to recognize heritage values incorporating multidisciplinary and multi-actor perspectives.

The socio-praxis approach, which is the outcome of an articulation of diverse methodologies that aim to support social processes from a bottom-up approach as a tool for decision making and community planning, was implemented in the present research. In this context, it supported the identification of heritage values incorporating multidisciplinary and multi-actor perspectives of two traditional neighborhoods of the city of Cuenca in Ecuador.

The results show that the identification of heritage values from multidisciplinary and multi-actor perspectives allows a more comprehensive vision of the existing values and the process reveals a greater involvement of the neighbors in heritage issues. The importance of structuring organized group of neighbors and positioning them as living experts has showed the complexity of cultural heritage conservation process but at the same time the significance for heritage management has been demonstrated. Therefore, this experience can be considered as an invaluable tool for heritage sites managers.

Stakeholder involvement in heritage conservation management has been widely discussed on international forums in the ultimate decades. While the importance of actor perceptions and priorities for sustainable heritage conservation is recognized, little has been said about the ways to reveal – non-expert – heritage values in such a way that people get involved in the heritage value assessment. In this perspective, the present research represents an invaluable tool for heritage sites that aim to implement a long-term management plans.

The importance of information service offerings is directly linked to decision-making processes for buying and selling in business-to-business (B2B) companies. B2B companies intend to offer information that helps other companies choose a product or service. This paper aims to identify the relationship between the types of information offered by a B2B company in its B2B marketing strategy and the decision-making of the companies which buy products and services.

For this purpose, a data set has been consulted that contains 439 observations that are the result of transactions using customer relationship managements (CRMs) of B2B-type companies. A total of 9 different products were consulted from 20 B2B vendors that manage their transactions with CRM software for B2B operations. A total of 439 different transactions were recorded by these vendors during 2018 (n = 439) with their information service offerings strategies. The results were analyzed with the partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results showed that the significance of the relationship between internal control factors and external control factors (H4) is the strongest one when using information services offerings strategies in a B2B environment. The results of this research can help B2B companies to improve their decision-making strategies and to define the structure of the information offered in their B2B marketing plans.

This research makes a contribution to an existing gap, which is to identify what the most important information is for purchasing companies in B2B environments and the relationship with this information, so that B2B purchasers can make good decisions thanks to the information service offerings strategy of the selling companies using CRMs.

The aim was to explore the existing literature on emotion and strategic leadership in a systematic review and to synthesize it into a theoretical model. A literature review on emotion in connection to strategic leadership was undertaken. After adhering to the search strategy and exclusion criteria, 46 peer-reviewed texts consisting of articles and relevant book chapters remained. The texts were analyzed according to the grounded theory method (GTM) to generate a new theoretical model and a core variable was identified, organizational emotion shaping. The model attempts to show how the interaction of individual and organizational framing factors with the strategic leader's tasks and challenges lead to emotion shaping internal and external of the organization. Suggestions for future research were formed and suggestions of practical implications were given. This literature review and theoretical integration offers a starting point for potential areas of further exploration.

In this qualitative case study we explored the experiences of low- achieving students responding to an educational blog. Our intention was to leverage the unique affordances of blogs to teach United States history concepts primarily by providing access to digital primary sources and facilitating on-line participation. Overall, our findings point to the positive potential of blogs to enhance instruction with low-achieving students. We found the integration of the educational blog provided an effective instructional format to differentiate content instruction and deliver “equity pedagogy.” In this study student participation increased, students engaged in historical work (although tentative), and the resources activated their prior knowledge. Rather than withholding Web 2.0 technologies from low-achieving students we encourage teachers to use them to meet the unique learning needs of all of their students. With thoughtful scaffolding, it appears teachers might be able to leverage the unique features of blog-based activities to improve student experiences.

This empirical study uses herd behavior model to explore the role of anchor investors in ensuring fundraising success and overfunding of crowdfunded ventures.

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is applied to find the configurational patterns describing how anchor investors' information disclosure leads to successful financing and overfunding.

Even when the anchor investor's resume is not detailed or the anchor investor has little experience in entrepreneurial investment, success or overfunding can be achieved, provided the anchor investor is a corporation rather than an individual. For individual anchor investors, a detailed resume matters. Overfunding can be achieved even when an individual anchor investor makes a small relative investment, if this small relative investment is compensated for by a detailed resume. Experience in entrepreneurial investment is crucial when individual anchor investors have few previous investments. Regardless of the anchor investor's identity, investment in absolute terms is crucial for crowdfunding success when experience in entrepreneurial investment is low. Such experience must be extensive if the anchor investor's resume is not detailed.

Both entrepreneurs and crowdfunding platforms can benefit from the findings in relation to the design of campaigns that use anchor investors' informational cues to achieve success and overfunding.

The study examines the importance of anchor investors' information disclosure in digital crowdfunding environments, differentiating between individual and corporate anchor investors.

本實證研究使用羊群行為模型, 去探究錨定投資者在確保眾籌活動可達成功籌資以及過多籌資方面所扮演的角色。

研究人員以定性比較分析法、去找出描述錨定投資者的資訊公佈如何帶來成功融資和過多籌資的配置模式。

研究結果顯示、只要錨定投資者不是個人、而是一間公司, 則即使他們的履歷不詳盡, 又或他們對企業投資的經驗淺薄, 也無礙籌資或過多籌資的成功完成。如錨定投資者為個人, 則詳盡的履歷會影響甚鉅。即使個人錨定投資者相對而言參與少量的投資, 但若這少量的投資給他們詳盡的履歷所彌補的話, 則過多籌資仍可成功達到。若個別錨定投資者原有的投資量不多的話, 則企業投資的經驗至為重要。不管錨定投資者的身份是什麼, 若他們對企業投資所持的經驗淺薄, 則按絕對值計算的投資額對眾籌能否成功至為重要。若錨定投資者的履歷不詳盡, 則這種經驗必須是豐富廣泛的。

本研究區分了個人錨定投資者與公司錨定投資者兩者對眾籌的影響, 就此而研究在數碼的眾籌環境裡, 錨定投資者信息公佈的重要性。

研究結果可幫助企業家和群眾募資平台去設計可使用錨定投資者的資訊提示來達至成功眾籌和過多籌資的活動。