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This study assesses the “possibilities of utilizing sustainable tourism to improve community sustenance in Musina Municipality, Limpopo, South Africa.”
Abstract
Purpose
This study assesses the “possibilities of utilizing sustainable tourism to improve community sustenance in Musina Municipality, Limpopo, South Africa.”
Design/methodology/approach
Therefore, to competently discern the implications of tourism in Musina Municipality, data got accumulated by questionnaire surveys, interviews, focus group discussions, document reviews and field observations. Thus, Microsoft Excel, Spreadsheet and Cross-Tabulation Analysis provided both quantitative and qualitative data analyses.
Findings
The study identified immense tourism potentials attached to low tourism influences and privileges on the local community's advancement. The relationships and contributory factors pointing to the present and latent tourism situations in Musina Municipality got critiqued. The study inferred that the Musina Municipality is well enriched with tourism potentials and necessitates a fitting tourism plan to profits the locals.
Originality/value
Musina Municipality is one of the driest districts in the remote North of Limpopo Province, South Africa. It is aggregated by meager livelihoods of rural communities, as do most rural communities abroad. However, the Municipality exemplifies some of the numerous tourism-based areas in the Vhembe District of Limpopo. The undertakings of tourism, community sustenance and sustainable promotion have been more proceeding to the lead. However, diverse investigations neglect to efficiently estimate the fundamental points and the complete functions of multiple forms of tourism in community development within many rural expanses.
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Keywords
A. Gabriela Castro Gessner and Erin Eldermire
Information literacy (IL) is increasingly becoming an explicit learning outcome for college graduates, and some libraries are playing a role in planning and teaching IL…
Abstract
Purpose
Information literacy (IL) is increasingly becoming an explicit learning outcome for college graduates, and some libraries are playing a role in planning and teaching IL instruction to students. Amidst the overall trend of shrinking budgets that libraries are experiencing, what strategies can be employed by libraries that support large universities to plan IL instruction? The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Inspired by curriculum mapping, staff in the library assessment department created teaching maps which match the curriculum from seven colleges with the library’s teaching efforts. To create them, they combined information about: first, courses that librarians have instructed over the last three years with; second, required courses for majors within the colleges; and third, typical enrollment for each course.
Findings
Easily accessible information was combined to create the teaching maps, which enable the library to realign efforts to maximize IL instruction and best utilize library staff resources.
Practical implications
Teaching maps serve as a portal to quickly understand majors, courses and course enrollment, and provide baseline information on past library instruction activity to inform future IL instruction strategy. Library directors and teaching staff are utilizing them to realign instruction efforts.
Originality/value
Assessment strategies, such as curriculum mapping, serve not only the institution’s teaching mission, but also help strategize for effective and efficient stewardship of staff resources. These methods will be useful for library directors, assessment and instruction librarians at large research universities.
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Peter Ekman, Cecilia Erixon and Peter Thilenius
This study aims to investigates the possible gap between the logic of these information technology (IT) systems and industrial firms’ marketing practices. Industrial firms rely…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigates the possible gap between the logic of these information technology (IT) systems and industrial firms’ marketing practices. Industrial firms rely extensively on IT systems for their business.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the contemporary marketing practice (CMP) model, which depicts firms’ marketing practice as ranging from transactional to more relational and networked-based, the logic of IT systems and how users in industrial firms adopt them are amended to create an extended model. The extended model is used to analyze an in-depth case based on 63 interviews regarding one industrial firm’s business with customers and suppliers and how IT is utilized in this setting.
Findings
Results show that industrial firms’ relationship-oriented business is poorly supported by currently used IT systems. This gap between the IT systems, which are transaction-focused, and industrial firms’ marketing practice, which is relationship-based, has severe effects on adoption and efficiency of IT systems. The marketers prefer local, non-integrated, IT with limited usefulness on an overall firm level while resisting the firms’ comprehensive IT systems. This forms an IT–marketing gap given that current IT does not match the marketing practice of relationship-oriented industrial firms.
Originality/value
This study applies an extended CMP model in a novel way focusing one industrial firm, its customers and suppliers and the IT used in this setting. The study shows that all marketing practices of the CMP model can be found in one firm’s business, albeit one category, i.e. interaction marketing (a relationship approach), is dominating. The use of the CMP framework offers new and valuable insights into the fundamental cause to the industrial marketers’ limited use of integrated IT.
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William Rodney and Paul Gallimore
This paper identifies that the methods used to quantify the financial risk of appraisals of private sector projects for primary health care development have been inadequate. Data…
Abstract
This paper identifies that the methods used to quantify the financial risk of appraisals of private sector projects for primary health care development have been inadequate. Data was collected and analysed from private developers on 18 schemes, varying by scale and location. It is argued that this is important for those involved with facilities management as well as those directly involved with the financial risk appraisal of a PFI/PPP project. Financial risks are more likely to arise when certain build designs are used which make projects more susceptible to particular risks. The paper makes recommendations on the appraisal of future projects for value for money reflecting the risk transfer achieved and devising a common, systematic format to provide consistency and standardisation. It concludes, however, that systems should not be formulated which might act as disincentives to the private sector, or impose increased workloads on the public sector in assessing proposals.
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Qualitative research suffers from “contestation” and a lack of “boilerplate” problems to assessing and presenting qualitative data, which have hampered its development and the…
Abstract
Purpose
Qualitative research suffers from “contestation” and a lack of “boilerplate” problems to assessing and presenting qualitative data, which have hampered its development and the broader acceptance of qualitative research. This paper aims to address this gap by marrying the constructivist methodology and RQDA, a relatively new open-source computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS)-based R extension and demonstrate how the software can increase the rigor, transparency and validity of qualitative research.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper highlights the constructivist approach as an important paradigm in qualitative research and demonstrates how it can be operationalized and enhanced using RQDA. It provides a technical and methodological review of RQDA, along with its main strengths and weaknesses, in relation with two popular CAQDAS tools, ATLAS.ti and NVivo. Using samples of customer-generated e-complaints and e-praises in the electronics/computer sector, this paper demonstrates the development of a process model of customer e-complaint rhetoric.
Findings
This study offers step-by-step instructions for installing and using RQDA for data coding, aggregation, plotting and theory building. It emphasizes the importance of techniques for sharing coding outputs among researchers and journal gatekeepers to better disseminate and share research findings. It also describes the authors’ use of RQDA in classrooms of undergraduates and graduate students.
Research limitations/implications
This paper addresses the “contestation” and “boilerplate” gaps, offering practical, step-by-step instructions to operationalize and enhance the constructivist approach using the RQDA-based approach. This opens new opportunities for existing R users to “cross over” to analyzing textual data as well as for computer-savvy scholars, analysts and research students in academia and industry who wish to transition to CAQDAS-based qualitative research because RQDA is free and can leverage the strengths of the R computing platform.
Originality/value
This study offers the first published review and demonstration of the RQDA-based constructivist methodology that provide the processes needed to enhance the rigor, transparency and validity of qualitative research. It demonstrates the systematic development of a data structure and a process model of customer e-complaint rhetoric using RQDA.
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Timo Hyvönen, Janne Järvinen and Jukka Pellinen
This paper aims to analyse how cost accounting knowledge is mediated in a large multinational organisation employing a company‐wide enterprise resource planning system and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse how cost accounting knowledge is mediated in a large multinational organisation employing a company‐wide enterprise resource planning system and off‐the‐shelf activity based costing software to create a uniform profitability management system within the organisation.
Design/methodology/approach
The case analysis is informed by the theoretical notions of dis‐and re‐embedding of expert knowledge, expert systems and standards.
Findings
The results indicate that standardised cost accounting software packages may be useful not only because of their superior data processing properties and technical efficiency, but also because of their usability in overcoming resistance to change. It is suggested that software packages and some degrees of freedom in the implementation process may actually enhance actors' “blind” commitment to the system and reduce resistance to the new system.
Originality/value
It is of interest to researchers and practitioners alike how ready‐made software packages may be successfully used in implementing the changes needed in the management accounting systems of large organisations. It is also particularly interesting to find reasons why software packages seem to be so useful in driving these changes.
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Wagner Junior Ladeira and Fernando de Oliveira Santini
This paper aims to analyze the effect of temporal experiences on the visualization of advertising appeals in the banking sector. More specifically, this study investigates the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the effect of temporal experiences on the visualization of advertising appeals in the banking sector. More specifically, this study investigates the effectiveness of advertising messages that use close-up “vs” long-shot images and influence objective temporality as a driver of visual attention.
Design/methodology/approach
One experiment was done through visual attention using an eye-tracking application. This investigation included the participation of 238 volunteers viewing 2 different types of advertising appeals: savings accounts and bank cards. The advertising appeals brought manipulations of close-up “vs” long-shot images.
Findings
The authors' findings indicate that close-up images increase visual attention in advertising appeals. On the other hand, the presence of long-shot images reduces visual attention in advertising appeals. Furthermore, the eye-tracking results revealed that long-short images constantly decreased with the passing of objective temporality. In contrast, close-up images had the first moment of increased visual attention levels followed by a fall toward the end of objective temporality.
Originality/value
The manipulation of image format differences can increase attention and memory effects. For this reason, the interaction between objective temporality and close-up “vs” long-shot images must be considered more carefully than has been done so far. This article reflects on this care and points the way to future research agendas.
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Donald D. Dennis and Mark C. Paster
Except for word processing, the electronic spreadsheet is probably the most useful general purpose software for the microcomputer user. Almost all spreadsheets are now packaged in…
Abstract
Except for word processing, the electronic spreadsheet is probably the most useful general purpose software for the microcomputer user. Almost all spreadsheets are now packaged in combination with other applications, such as database systems and graphic capabilities. To become proficient in the development of spreadsheet applications, one must be prepared to invest a certain amount of time and effort, but the user will be rewarded by the results. In addition to a general discussion of spreadsheets, the authors critically review Microsoft Excel, version 2.0 (for the IBM PS/2, PC‐AT, or compatibles), noting enhancements over earlier spreadsheets. A sidebar presents spreadsheet templets that can be used to manage a library retrospective conversion project.
ERIC G. FLAMHOLTZ, MARIA L. BULLEN and WEI HUA
There is growing recognition that the core economic resources of the current era are human and intellectual capital, rather than physical assets such as inventories, plant, and…
Abstract
There is growing recognition that the core economic resources of the current era are human and intellectual capital, rather than physical assets such as inventories, plant, and equipment. Given the increasing importance of human capital and intellectual property as determinants of economic success at both the macroeconomic and enterprise levels, it is clear that the nature of investments made by firms need to shift to reflect the new economic realities. Specifically, if human capital is a key determinant of organizational success, then investments in training and development of people also become critical. In turn, there is a need to develop concepts and tools for monitoring and evaluating management development programs in terms of their impact, results, and value or return on investment. The specific objective of this article is to draw upon the concepts and measurement approaches of the field that has come to be known as “human resource accounting” and show how they, specifically the stochastic rewards valuation model, can be used as tools for the measurement of the value of investments in training programs designed to increase the value of human capital.