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Drawing from two years of multi-sited fieldwork about international backpacking in Central America, I make important connections between the backpacking escape motive, the backpacker hostel, and tourism. I explain how backpackers experience the hostel as their “home base” and “home away from home” to escape into local cultures and natural environments that exist outside of it and an international community of travelers that convenes inside of it. I refer to theories on modern tourism, the backpacking escape motive, and the concept of community. I also theorize how the global spread of modern amenities and tourism shapes backpackers' escape experiences.

The structure of public school systems does not foster or grow leadership. Instead, individuals are promoted through the system most frequently as a result of having held certain positions. Teachers become classroom personnel. Classroom personnel become administrators. Administrators become principals. These progressions from classroom to principal are infrequently accompanied by educational pathways or professional development that ensures that those entering into positions of leadership are actually prepared to lead. Instead, people ascend to positions of leadership after having obtained the “right” credentials or walked in the “right” shoes. The consequence of this practice has led to a significant number of people who hold leadership positions but are ill-equipped to lead. This chapter will address this situation by contemplating what can be done to (a) prevent people who should not be leaders from becoming leaders and (b) create a system that cultivates leaders who both hold leadership positions and are positioned to lead.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the economic determinants of the compensation for chief executive officers (CEOs) between the pre- and post-financial crisis periods. To conduct the comparative analysis, the authors consider five years before and five years after the financial crisis of 2008. The authors use the data from the US financial service institutions and run separate regressions for the pre- and post-crisis periods to check if there is any significant difference in the economic determinants of executive compensation before and after the financial crisis. The authors find that total compensation and its incentive components decreased significantly in the post-crisis period. In the pre-crisis period, total compensation was determined by stock performance, accounting profit, growth, and leverage, whereas in the post-crisis period stock returns and leverage are the major factors influencing total compensation. The authors also find that firms’ leverage negatively influences the sensitivity of the pay for performance, but the influence of leverage on pay for performance is weaker in the post-crisis period. Our research is significant in the context of the US economy, the regulatory reforms of financial institutions, and the perspectives of the executive compensations. This is the first study that compares the relationship between compensation and firm performance over the pre- and post-crisis periods. It is an explicit attempt to develop a theoretical understanding of the compensation/performance relationship for the financial industry, which is blamed for the financial crisis and is affected by the Dodd–Frank regulation after the crisis.

Research on weighting of measures often examines only one incentive at a time (usually bonus) and provide mixed findings regarding the relevance of non-financial performance (NFM) measures to evaluate and reward long-term time horizon employees. Using proprietary data from an auto dealership organization, we show that financial measures (FM) are weighted more for bonus than they are weighted for merit raise and promotion but NFM are weighted more than FM for merit raise and promotion. Thus, the temporal orientations of the measures and incentives seem to be aligned: the short-term (long-term) nature of FM (NFM) parallel’s the time horizon of the incentives. Next, our exploratory research questions find that for bonuses, both FM and NFM exert similar levels of significant and positive influence on junior and senior managers. But for promotions, the influence of FM is insignificant for both groups. In contrast, the influence of NFM on promotions is not only significant for both groups but is significantly greater for junior managers than it is for senior managers. That is, the evaluations of NFM for senior managers are less influential on their promotion than they are for junior managers suggesting that promotions for senior managers are often based on factors other than their formal performances.

Many argue that the design of compensation contracts for public company chief executive officers (CEOs) is often not guided by a goal of value maximization. Yet, there is limited direct empirical evidence on the negative consequences of the proposed inefficient contracting between shareholders and CEOs. Using data on CEO bonus contracts of the S&P 500 firms, we investigate potential firm performance implications of the use of qualitative criteria such as leadership and mentoring in those contracts. We maintain that unlike quantitative criteria, qualitative criteria are difficult to define and measure on an objective basis, possibly resulting in an inefficient and biased incentive structure. Twenty-five percent of the sample observations have CEO bonus contracts that include a qualitative criterion for bonus payment determination. Our results show that employee productivity, asset productivity, capital expenditures, and future abnormal stock returns are lower for firms that use a qualitative criterion in CEO bonus contracts than those that do not. Further, contrary to the argument in prior literature that earnings management decreases with the use of subjective performance indicators in incentive contracts, we find that income-increasing accruals are actually higher when the CEO bonus contract includes a qualitative criterion. We recommend that compensation committees set concrete, measurable performance goals for CEOs, providing CEOs with better guidance and helping improve their corporate decision making.

The authors investigate the joint effects of two environmental variables, performance-based pay (PBP) and performance monitoring (PM), on behavioral dishonesty in a setting where the controls subsequently are absent. In a laboratory study using 88 participants in a 2×2 experimental design, simulating a work environment, the authors manipulate the presence of PBP and PM. Once the participants are accustomed to their assigned work environment and have completed contractual tasks unrelated to the dishonesty experiment, the authors allow them to privately roll dice to determine the size of a bonus gift card. Dishonesty levels are inferred from differences between treatment groups in the prizes claimed. The authors find an interaction effect, where inferred dishonesty in the performance-based-pay group is higher than the fixed-pay group when there is no PM, but lower when there is PM. Although theory and existing literature did not lead us to hypothesize these exact results, they offer important insights into a complex relationship. By jointly examining the effects of worker contracts and workplace monitoring on dishonesty, this research extends the understanding of the potential consequences of formal controls. As the workplace grows more complex, employers increasingly rely on information provided by frontline employees and managers. Thus, unintended effects of managerial controls on honesty are an important topic in the business literature.