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This section of the book comprises three chapters written by Oksana Grybovych, Susan Slocum, Ken Backman, Elisabeth Baldwin and Chris Ryan. The first two by Grybovych (2012) and Slocum, Backman, and Baldwin (2012) respectively report research processes related to specific projects, while the last seeks to provide an analysis associated with cross-case study research. By definition cross-case analysis relates to comparisons being made across different places, or of the same place across different times (a longitudinal analysis such as that by Gu & Ryan, 2008, 2011, in their studies of Shi Chi Hai Hutong in Beijing) or indeed of different places at different times, but related to each other by the commonality of a theme identified by the researcher.

Tourism is being utilized as a key economic development tool of the 21st century. Serious concern over the benefit of tourism for the poor has contributed to discussion on community involvement and community participation in contemporary literature. In particular, sustainable development has become a way to address the long-term viability of income and employment in least-developed countries while attempting to preserve traditional customs and culture in the face of globalization. Sustainability refers to finding solutions to poverty without compromising the natural and cultural resource base needed by future generations to pursue their own economic goals. This task requires attention to the economic, cultural and social needs of all groups while focusing on solutions that are also viable for the long term (Bramwell, 2001; Davidson, 2007; Mfaume & Leonard, 2004). It is also important to note that social structures and cultural references vary noticeably within countries and regions. Therefore, three separate, independent instrumental case studies (also known as collective case studies) were conducted in three distinct Tanzanian communities in or around tourism destinations. The objective was to allow for the autonomy of specific cultural, social and business networks to be reflected in the research methodology.

Case studies allow for the investigation of constraints to economic participation within real-life experiences, as there is no clear distinction between the phenomenon and the context. Instrumental case studies strive to develop theory, or in this case, facilitate understanding of pervasive problems and do not require typical study populations (Stake, 1995). An instrumental case study is utilized where a ‘particular case is examined mainly to provide insight’ into a phenomenon and the case supports understanding of the phenomenon (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). The emphasis is placed on specific issues rather than on the case itself. The case in then used as a vehicle to develop a better understanding of the situation or problem (Stake, 2003). Single case studies are ideal for investigating a phenomenon that has not been previously studied and can make a significant contribution to knowledge (Yin, 2003). Since constraints to economic participation within Tanzania have not yet been empirically studied, each individual case study is exploratory in nature.

Once the specific case studies were independently derived and themes developed, a cross-case comparison offered insight into reoccurring themes or case-specific constraints. Using an iterative process, the strength of this methodology lies in the inductive approach that provides suggestive rather than definitive analysis (Welch, 1994). The first phase of analysis results in ‘within’ themes specific to a particular region. Using cross-case comparisons, emergent patterns provide similarities and differences between the three communities.

Maria Amoamo is a post-doctoral fellow in Te Tumu, the School of Māori Pacific and Indigenous Studies at University of Otago in New Zealand. Maria's research interests include the representation of indigenous, cultural and heritage tourism. Her PhD thesis examined the issue of identity in relation to Māori regional tourism within a post-colonial framework. She is currently examining the economic value of identity in relation to determining ‘what is the profile of Māori tourism in Dunedin?’ Maria is also examining the issue of social vulnerability and resilience of Pacific Island communities in relation to tourism.

Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.

A unifying theme apparent at this year's Symposium was the need for balance when lifting the veil of bank secrecy: (1) the need to protect civil liberties versus the need to fight crime; (2) the bank's need to balance its role as policeman while furthering its commercial objectives; (3) the necessity of weighing international cooperation against the awareness that individual nations jealously guard their own legislative regime; (4) the dichotomy of technology that serves both to protect and penetrate secrecy; (5) the balance required when investigating crimes.

By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted amongst waste-pickers and recycling traders in the waste paper, plastic and scrap metal sectors, and engaging with literature from economic anthropology and history, as well as archival sources, this paper documents changing perceptions of just price, morality and fairness in the Turkish recycling market. The paper suggests that multiple markets imply multiple prices, which are contingent and contested. When dealing with price mechanisms largely outside their control, actors tend to associate a fair price with the going market price, rather than factors such as state regulation. Approaches to morality and assessments of fairness become more ambiguous when prices are mediated by actors’ own practices. These range from gift relations to paternalism, envy and deception.

This article aims to find a chain of causal relations affecting the operating effectiveness of the implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) system instead of focusing on either the evaluation of software/vendors/consultants or critical successful factors (CSF) identification for ERP implementation, a course followed by the dominant ERP literature.

This article is a process‐oriented approach and aims to give a moving picture of how one step affects another step from pre‐implementation stage, to during‐implementation stage, and to post‐implementation stage.

A significant insight learned from this study is that end‐users across the organization must be educated from the onset of ERP implementation. Although education is a corner‐stone of ERP implementation, the user training is usually only emphasized and the courses are centered on computer/system operation rather than on understanding the ERP concept and spirit.

This article may be interesting to some academic researchers and practical managers, and hopefully can provide a link/step for advanced researches in exploring post‐implementation ERP.