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The concept and practice of e-services has become essential in business transactions. Yet there are still many organizations that have not developed e-services optimally. This is especially relevant in the context of Indonesian Airline companies. Therefore, many airline customers in Indonesia are still in doubt about it, or even do not use it. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for e-services adoption and empirically examines the factors influencing the airlines customers in Indonesia in using e-services offered by the Indonesian airline companies. Taking six Indonesian airline companies as a case example, the study investigated the antecedents of e-services usage of Indonesian airlines. This study further examined the impacts of motivation on customers in using e-services in the Indonesian context. Another important aim of this study was to investigate how ages, experiences and geographical areas moderate effects of e-services usage.

The study adopts a positivist research paradigm with a two-phase sequential mixed method design involving qualitative and quantitative approaches. An initial research model was first developed based on an extensive literature review, by combining acceptance and use of information technology theories, expectancy theory and the inter-organizational system motivation models. A qualitative field study via semi-structured interviews was then conducted to explore the present state among 15 respondents. The results of the interviews were analysed using content analysis yielding the final model of e-services usage. Eighteen antecedent factors hypotheses and three moderating factors hypotheses and 52-item questionnaire were developed. A focus group discussion of five respondents and a pilot study of 59 respondents resulted in final version of the questionnaire.

In the second phase, the main survey was conducted nationally to collect the research data among Indonesian airline customers who had already used Indonesian airline e-services. A total of 819 valid questionnaires were obtained. The data was then analysed using a partial least square (PLS) based structural equation modelling (SEM) technique to produce the contributions of links in the e-services model (22% of all the variances in e-services usage, 37.8% in intention to use, 46.6% in motivation, 39.2% in outcome expectancy, and 37.7% in effort expectancy). Meanwhile, path coefficients and t-values demonstrated various different influences of antecedent factors towards e-services usage. Additionally, a multi-group analysis based on PLS is employed with mixed results. In the final findings, 14 hypotheses were supported and 7 hypotheses were not supported.

The major findings of this study have confirmed that motivation has the strongest contribution in e-services usage. In addition, motivation affects e-services usage both directly and indirectly through intention-to-use. This study provides contributions to the existing knowledge of e-services models, and practical applications of IT usage. Most importantly, an understanding of antecedents of e-services adoption will provide guidelines for stakeholders in developing better e-services and strategies in order to promote and encourage more customers to use e-services. Finally, the accomplishment of this study can be expanded through possible adaptations in other industries and other geographical contexts.

This paper attempts to critically question present IPE approaches and analyses that aim at assessing China’s role within the international political economy. Thus, unlike common theorizations that see the country as being integrated within US hegemony (Panitch and Gindin) or those accounts that claim that we are already witnessing the “terminal crisis” of US hegemony accompanied by a hegemonic transition toward China (Arrighi), the paper will argue that China was able to gain “relative geopolitical autonomy” as a result of the revolutionary processes it went through and eventually assert itself as a contender state, now just in the process of challenging US hegemony. Dissatisfied with existent theorizations of hegemony, I will be drawing on the critical edition of Gramsci’s Quaderni and attempt to offer a new perspective regarding the conceptualization thereof. Thus applying the elaborated framework of analysis to the current situation, I argue that unlike the US’s ability to counter the challenge of its traditional imperial rivals Germany and Japan as they developed under the grip of US hegemony, the country is facing difficulties in countering China’s ascent. However, while maintaining that China does indeed represent a challenge to US hegemony, particularly in East Asia, I will argue that the idea of a “crisis of US hegemony” is premature as China remains distant from fully realizing hegemonic relations, even at the regional level.

Phenomena are what we as researchers begin with, and to study phenomena is to appreciate how any determination of things and events always relates back to the context in which they appeared. Phenomenology is the study of such relations of appearance and the conditions of such relations. Appearance is an active rather than superficial condition, a constant bringing together of experiencing beings and experienced things (including sentient beings), in what the modern “father” of phenomenology Edmund Husserl called conditions of intentionality, and what his errant, one-time student Martin Heidegger called conditions of thrownness and projection. This chapter delves into the philosophical background of this mode of study, before opening up into consideration of, first, where phenomenology has been influential in organization studies, and, second, the potential of the approach. In so doing, we suggest much can be made of reorienting research in organization studies away from an entitative epistemology in which things are seen in increasingly causally linked, detailed isolation, and toward a relational epistemology in which what exists is understood in terms of its being experienced within everyday lives.

International tourist hotels play important roles in the service industry and have to constantly improve their competitiveness. They need to provide their customers with consistently high service quality in order to satisfy them. The employees of the international tourist hotels are the most important links in the service delivery chain because they are in direct contact with their customers. Because employee morale affects customer satisfaction the managers of the international tourist hotels need to cultivate good relations with their internal staff. Prior research identifies many factors affecting the satisfaction of employees. While relevant literature extensively investigates job satisfaction and leadership behavior, studies of these variables in the tourism service, particularly in hotel management, are almost absent. This research concerns the correlation between the style of managerial leadership and employee's job satisfaction in the international tourist hotel industry. After literature reviewing, empirical model and hypotheses are established. The study employs the questionnaires to conduct an investigation for employees in international tourist hotels so as to collect information. This research surveys 500 employees in international tourist hotels by questionnaire. A total of 300 questionnaires were returned (73 percent). Through correlation analysis, this research discovers that employees are more satisfied under consideration-style-leadership than construction-style-leadership. After controlling for differences in salary, employees appear to prefer consideration-style-leadership. No matter what the leadership style is, employees’ job satisfaction does not relate towards their coworkers. Besides, employees have different perceptions on work, salary, and overall satisfaction depending on their education level and seniority. The findings in this research expand the knowledge of human resource management and provide some practical suggestions to managers. The study provides a mechanism by which hoteliers can obtain feedback from employees about leadership styles. Such feedback can then serve as the basis for further development of leadership theory across disciplines. This study provides a guide to the preparation of supervisor in the hotel industry as effective leaders for the dynamic environment of the future. This study also provides a basis for informing developers of leadership training programs that can lead to improved hospitality academic leadership.

Purpose – To understand women's participation in domestic and global sex (entertainment) industries in South Korea, this study proposes an integrative theoretical framework of political economy with three analytical dimensions: position in the world-system, local patriarchy, and the state policies.

Method/approach – The theory that seeks to understand the South Korean government's policy on prostitution is formulated based on reviews of transnational and global research on gender and sex work, local patriarchy, and political economy of world-system. Two historical examples of the sex industry, businesses near U.S. military camps on the Korean peninsula and Korean prostitutes in several cities of Japan, are used to illustrate the theory. The data for these cases were collected from a variety of sources including government and nongovernment documents, newspaper articles, film, and demographic information.

Findings – The application of the theoretical frame makes it possible to understand the socioeconomic and political contexts in which South Korean society, as a semiperipheral nation, has produced a vast number of women in the sex industry.

Practical implications – When the government's policy emphasizes rapid economic growth viewing women as a source of revenue, it will be difficult to understand marginalization of women's status in informal sectors and massive production of prostitutes in domestic and transnational scale.

Value of study – Using a macro and structural perspective, this study sheds light on the transnational/global nature of the prostitution industry, and specifically the role of the state, and local patriarchy in the globalizing South Korean sex industry.

Although there has been much psychological research about children's sibling relations, it has been a neglected area of study in sociology (exceptions are Brannen et al., 2000; Kosonen, 1996; Mauthner, 2002). This paper, based on empirical research on siblings in Scotland, explores the nature of the generational power structure within families from children's perspectives. Childhood is a relational concept which forms part of the generational order. Alanen explains this as “a complex set of social processes through which people become (are constructed as) ‘children’ while other people become (are constructed as) ‘adults’” (2001, pp. 20, 21). Generational processes shape the nature of child-parent relations (Mayall, 2002). Alanen states that:one position (such as the parental position) cannot exist without the other (child) position; also what parenting is – that is, action in the position of a parent – is dependent on its relation to the action “performed” in the child position, and a change in one part is tied to change in the other (Alanen, 2001, p. 19).In other words, child-parent relations are based on the understanding that childhood is relational with parenthood (see also Mayall, 2002). Alanen (2001) argues that the social construction of childhood and adulthood involves a process, including the agency of both children and adults, which she refers to as a set of “practices”:It is through such practices that the two generational categories of children and adults are recurrently produced and therefore they stand in relations of connection and interaction, of interdependence (Alanen, 2001, p. 21).These practices of generationing may be “childing” practices through which people are constructed as children or “adulting” practices through which a distinct adult position is produced. The ways in which children in the present study talked about the differences between their relationships with their parents and their siblings indicated that there are a range of generationing practices that take place within families. They referred to particular kinds of behaviour that were acceptable to engage in with other children (in this case with their siblings) but not with their parents. Overwhelmingly the key issue which children highlighted as distinct between their relations with parents and siblings was the differential nature of power in these relationships. Whilst it is not surprising that children perceive the distribution of power to be more unequal between children and parents than between siblings, the aim of this paper is to explore the nature of this power and how it is experienced from children's point of view. In particular the paper discusses the ways in which children perceive child-parent relations compared with their sibling relationships in relation to the giving and receiving of power within the home.

Understanding sources of sustained competitive advantage has become a major area of research in strategic management. Building on the assumptions that strategic resources are heterogeneously distributed across firms and that these differences are stable over time, this article examines the link between firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Four empirical indicators of the potential of firm resources to generate sustained competitive advantage-value, rareness, imitability, and substitutability are discussed. The model is applied by analyzing the potential of several firm resources for generating sustained competitive advantages. The article concludes by examining implications of this firm resource model of sustained competitive advantage for other business disciplines.

This study attempts to introduce South Korea's unique experiences of civic operations made in Iraq and Lebanon. Koreans approached it with extreme caution since they are seeing through two different lenses: “paying back syndrome” from the Korean War experiences is colliding with the “Vietnam syndrome” from the experiences of Vietnam War. Expanding its regional role through revitalizing PKOs is not an easy job for the ROK government despite the fact that President Lee has committed himself to increase its efforts since his campaign days. South Korea recently decided to send its KDX-II type destroyer to Somalia for joining the maritime peacekeeping while people in Korea strongly suspect that the Obama administration would soon request to send its troops to Afghanistan as a part of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). As the Korean society is getting democratized, progressive NGOs have been opposing the government decision to send forces to assist the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It remains to be seen how President Lee persuades people to bear the burden and endure sacrifices. At least, four problems need to be addressed for Korea to become a major troop-contributing country (TCC): first, Korea needs to enact laws to deal with South Korea's participation in the UN PKOs. Second, Korea needs to find a way to include civilian experts in future activities of UN PKOs. Third, it needs to increase the budget and size of standby forces. Lastly, it needs to educate people to understand why Korea has to contribute further to make a safer world. It remains to be seen whether South Korea will continue to focus on its stabilization and reconstruction efforts without sending its combat troops.