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The Youth Hostels Association (YHA) of New Zealand has been widely recognized and awarded for its leading environmental and sustainability initiatives in the tourism industry. The concern for the environment is an important part of YHA's organizational culture since its beginnings in the 30s when the first youth hostels were opened in New Zealand. In 1992 an Environmental Charter adopted by the International Youth Hostel Federation (IYHF) was quickly implemented by YHA New Zealand. Since then a large number of sustainability initiatives have been put in place throughout the whole network of 56 hostels. This case study details these initiatives as well as the challenges that YHA New Zealand faces in this context.

Investigates changes in skilled and unskilled employment over the 1980s using UK data skills from the Labour Force Survey and the New Earnings Survey Panel Data set, matched with industrial data from the Census of Production. The major findings are: that there was a rise in non‐manual wage and employment shares over the 1980s but only a slight rise in that of the skilled; and that in industries where foreign competition intensified the manual wage share fell, but there was no significant effect on the unskilled.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the adoption process of innovative asphalt equipment in road construction and how the level of knowledge as characterised by the level of education in the companies affects this process. The emphasis is on equipment used for transporting asphalt from asphalt plant to construction site or at the construction site itself. It is assumed that the uptake of this equipment is influenced by the radicality of the innovation and the company's level of education.

In this research, the innovation behaviour of construction companies is assessed through a case study, an expert opinion, and an industry survey (of which 55 per cent of the total population participated).

The results show that on average, experts and companies alike give more radical equipment innovations less adoption chances. Companies prefer to make minor improvements and perceive no benefits in implementing a risky radical equipment innovation. Companies that have a higher level of knowledge are found to show a more positive and professional attitude towards implementing innovative asphalt equipment.

The defined knowledge is restricted to the formal level of education of both management and the firm in one part of the construction industry. The knowledge indicator used in this study has a high validity (it is easy to measure). Further research could focus on other types of knowledge affecting innovation adoption in other parts of the construction industry.

The value of this study is that it addresses the important questions of how managers of construction firms select equipment and how it is affected by the level of knowledge.

Marketers frequently lament the lack of representation of marketing in the boardroom and the short tenure of CMOs. The most common explanations offered are that marketing is not perceived as a strategic discipline and that marketers do not demonstrate a strong enough understanding of how the business makes money.

Financial accounting is how “score is kept” in terms of business performance. It is, therefore, in the self-interest of marketers to become familiar with financial reporting. Doing so will allow them to understand how marketing activities are recorded. In addition, academic researchers need to understand the meaning of the financial measures that they often use as the metrics of success when researching marketing strategy questions.

This is especially important since financial reporting generally does not recognize assets created by marketing investments. In order to substantiate a claim that “brands are assets”, marketers must be able to explain how the financial accounting rules misrepresent economic reality and why managers might use a different set of principles for management reporting.

We argue that the misrepresentation of market-based assets has two forms of negative impact for marketers: external and internal. The external problems are that financial statements are not especially informative about the value of marketing for the providers of capital and do not provide a true portrait of the economic resource base of the company. The internal problems are that marketers cannot point to valuable assets that they are creating, nor can they be effectively held accountable for the way that these assets are managed given that the assets are not recorded.

We do not expect immediate radical changes in financial reporting because financial accounting rules are designed with the specific interests of the suppliers of capital (debt and equity) in mind. To influence financial accounting developments, such as encouraging greater disclosure of marketing activity in the notes to the published accounts, marketers must be able to communicate in language understood by accountants and the current users of financial accounts. To aid this we provide guidance for marketers on the purpose and practices of accounting. We also discuss how academic marketing researchers might wish to adjust financial accounting data to capitalize a proportion of marketing expenses for companies where marketing is a primary driver of business performance.