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Absorptive capacity is a knowledge-processing ability that hospitality organizations should hone to create competitive advantage in a fierce business environment. This study aims to examine an integrative model explaining how hospitality organizations infuse external knowledge into competitive advantage via absorptive capacity processes and opportunity-capturing abilities.

This study used structural equation modeling, using the R Lavaan package, with 288 survey responses collected from hospitality employees.

Structural equation modeling with multiple indirect relationships presents a holistic picture of how hospitality organizations develop externally acquired knowledge into organizational outcomes through detailed absorptive capacity processes. Unit size is found to positively moderate the indirect relationship between external acquisition and competitive advantage through knowledge transformation only. Competitiveness level negatively moderates indirect relationships through assimilation and transformation.

The findings highlight the importance of hospitality organizations’ knowledge management capabilities through acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation processes. These integrative mechanisms can be facilitated by intraorganizational coordinative processes through collective interpretations and applications of knowledge and effective organizational routines based on management and technical support.

This study proposes an integrative model encompassing a process perspective and the role of intraorganizational coordination in bridging potential and realized absorptive capacity.

This study aims to provide a better understanding of how gift card receivers react to the types of gift cards. This study examined the effect of gift card types (intangible experiences vs less intangible experience vs tangible goods) on a recipient’s willingness to spend more through emotions and perceived effort (Study 1) and on feeling of appreciation (Study 2).

Study 1 adopted a scenario-based 2 (tangible vs intangible) × 3 ($100 vs $200 vs $300) between-subjects design. Study 2 narrowed the scope of gift card type (intangible vs less intangible).

Receivers tended to perceive less effort in gift card selection and feel less emotion when receiving gift cards for intangible experiences than when receiving gift cards for both tangible and less intangible products. However, as face value increased, gift card receivers for intangible experiences felt more pleasure and, in turn, rated higher willingness to spend more money than face value than those with gift cards for tangible products.

Future studies can rule out alternative explanations related to brand-related effects, previous experiences and personal preferences.

Service providers should put more effort into tangibilizing the intangibles to reduce receivers’ uncertainty. Also, they can increase their profitability by stimulating gift card receivers’ willingness to spend more money through pleasure.

Answering research calls for examining consumers’ perceptions of different gift card types, this study might be the first to unveil the differential effect of gift card types associated with the tangibility of products on purchase behavior and the underlying emotional mechanism.

This paper takes up a question raised by Edward Lim in an article on the MALMARC Project in the issue of July 1980 regarding the place of advanced technology in the libraries of developing countries where labour is cheap and plentiful. Advances in Malaysia show that some developing countries are more developed than others and that the achievements of the Project confirm that it is appropriate to introduce computers into library work there. The main question remains however, the appropriateness of advanced information systems in developing countries and what standing libraries might have in contributing to the development process where ‘information’ about information could be considered even more important than some of the fields where great effort has long been directed to ‘development’. The paper suggest some areas where library staff ‘displaced’ by automation might best serve in a developing country while libraries themselves attempt to make best use of technological developments available; these should be ‘internalised’ to give the country the best benefit of new advances.

This paper uses the four occupational categories identified by the OECD ‐ information producers, information processors, information distributors and infrastructure providers ‐ to explore the state of the information economy of countries in the Asia Pacific region. As would be expected, the developed countries in the region have more advanced information economies than the developing countries as measured by the outputs of these four occupational categories. This does not imply that the developing countries in the region are sitting on their hands. Many countries have developed strategies to improve their information technology and telecommunications infrastructure. The paper argues that perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on infrastructure development and not enough on human resource development. It identifies in particular the need to train information processors (i.e. people who use information for the creation of new knowledge, to make decisions or to increase productivity and profit) through the development of information literacy skills, and information distributors, particularly library and information professionals. In connection with the training of information professionals, the writer argues that the current curriculum in many library schools is no longer suitable, and stresses the need to build a curriculum that revolves around the model of the virtual library and the Internet

Considers some of the different perspectives to interlending and library practices. Attempts to clarify the nature of some of the costs associated with interlibrary lending (ILL). Observes that basically there is no contradiction in library attitudes towards the need for ILL. Shows that if all costs are taken into consideration, a case for better stocks within a lending system, compensatory measures to net lenders, and a more efficient document delivery system outside the library environment can be made.

“BY WHAT CRITERIA”, a modern Socrates might ask his pupils, “are we to know that a good woman is good ?” And the pupils, after pondering for many months, might reply “We have sought out many good women and they tell us that their measurements are 36‐23‐36; know therefore that any woman who conforms to these measurements is a good woman, but any woman who fails to so conform is not a good woman”. But Socrates would know that a woman might conform to these measurements yet still be ugly in appearance and shrewish by temperament; cold and unloving, while conversely many women could be paragons of womanliness and be nowhere near these measurements.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether preprint servers are a disruptive technology for science, librarians or information seeking among the general population.

This column explores what preprint servers are, how they are used in the world of science, how their usage changed in response to the deluge of COVID-19 related research papers and how they might impact the work of librarians and society in general.

Preprint servers are not a highly disruptive technology, but they do challenge both scientists and librarians to understand them better, use the information they find on them with care and educate society in general on topics such as peer review and the importance of using well-vetted, good quality science in making important decisions.

Up until the past year and a half, only a small segment of the librarian profession needed to be concerned with preprint servers. With the increasing presence of references to non-peer-reviewed articles from preprint servers in popular media reports, most librarians now need to know something about this technology. It is also useful to consider how the technology might benefit and create challenges for their work.

For the past two decades, researchers have been exploring knowledge of work engagement in the hospitality and tourism industry (HTI). This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of global research trends in the field through a bibliometric analysis.

A total of 335 papers from 2005 to 2021 were searched using the Scopus database. The analysis focused on the temporal distribution, most productive journals, countries/territories, institutions, authors, international and authors' collaboration, the most cited publications and author keywords. The VOS viewer and R software were used to visualise the scientific landscapes.

The results indicated a rapidly increasing trend of studies on work engagement in the HTI. The journal with the most published articles was the International Journal of Hospitality Management. The USA ranked first in production, and Karatepe, O.M., from Turkey was the leading author. The first and most cited article was from Salanova et al. (2005). Other themes were identified, mainly related to job resources and outcomes associated with work engagement.

The study provides a more comprehensive understanding of the progress of work engagement in HTI studies and offers clues for further investigation in this field.

This is the first paper to explore work engagement in the HTI using quantitative and visualised bibliometric analysis.