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Private club members belong to an organization where people with common interests, experiences, backgrounds and professions meet for social and recreational purposes. This study aims to examine the relationships among private club members’ perceptions of social media regarding perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, attitude toward social media involvement and behavioral intention toward social media usage.

An online survey was conducted among private club members across the USA (n = 571). The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study center on the perceptions of club members and their beliefs and attitudes associated with their social media usage behavior. This study extends the social media literature by supporting previous studies that suggest a causal flow from perceived ease of use to intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment) based on a motivational model.

This study is meaningful for revealing the perceptions of private club members and their beliefs and attitudes associated with their social media usage behavior. It is untested whether this study’s model applies to other hospitality businesses. Future research could examine other segments and add other variables such as perceived security and trust.

This study can provide private club managers, and the members of the clubs that they lead, with a better understanding of online social media.

This study is one of a few empirical online social media studies in the area of the private club industry. This study seeks to provide baselines regarding social media perceptions and usage in the hospitality literature by providing a comprehensive model.

This study aims to examine the effects of employee voice (EV) and team-member exchange (TMX) on employee job satisfaction (EJS) and affective commitment to an organization among Gen Y employees of hotel companies in the USA and China.

Using a Qualtrics panel, a self-administered online survey was completed by Gen Y hotel employees in the USA and China. Multiple-group structural equation modeling analysis examined relative moderating effects on the proposed framework.

The effect of EV on EJS was greater in China than in the USA. However, Gen Y hotel employees in the USA who experience high-quality TMX are more likely to have greater EJS than they would in China.

Further studies need to be carried out in other hospitality sectors or non-hospitality business areas with different cross-national contexts.

Chinese hotel managers need to develop effective ways to encourage Gen Y EV. To promote TMX of Gen Y employees in the USA, supporting team-oriented projects and/or evaluations can be an effective way.

This study advances previous cross-cultural studies by focusing on a generation subculture. It makes significant contributions to the hospitality literature, as it is the first among research studies that examines Gen Y employees’ extra-role behavior (EV) and TMX across different national cultures: the USA vs China.

This study aims to develop and test an integrative model that examines the effects of customization and perceived employee authenticity on customer delight, which in turn influences customers’ willingness to recommend (WTR) and willingness to pay a premium (WTPP) as outcomes in a hotel context. The moderating role of online review valence in this process is also examined.

This study adopts a 2 (customization: low vs high) × 2 (perceived employee authenticity: low vs high) × 2 (online review valence: negative vs positive) experimental design. A total of 409 US consumers were recruited and randomly assigned to a hotel check-in scenario. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.

Findings confirmed the role of customer delight in mediating customization and employee authenticity on WTR and WTPP. In addition, perceived employee authenticity was a stronger driver of customer delight for consumers exposed to negative online reviews than for those exposed to positive reviews.

The findings provide useful guidance in designing efficient service strategies for generating a delightful customer experience. Hotel practitioners should provide customized services and manage employees in a way that helps them deliver authentic services that achieve customer delight. Understanding that customer expectations formed through online reviews play a significant role in service evaluations, hotel managers make an extra effort to monitor online reviews and manage customer expectations.

Although existing research suggests that customer delight plays an important role in positive consumer outcomes, there is still potential space to explore the theoretical mediational mechanisms underlying this effect and the moderating effect on this relationship between customer delight and consumer responses. This study contributes by testing the moderating impact of online review valence and the mediating impact of customer delight.

This study aims to examine the relationships among leader–member exchange (LMX), employee voice, team–member exchange (TMX), employee job satisfaction and employee commitment to customer service (ECCS) across the USA and Chinese cultures within the hotel context.

An online survey was completed by hotel employees across the USA (n = 315) and China (n = 363). The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study imply that the relationships among constructs between two nations are very similar, with a few significant differences. Specifically, this study shows that there are significant differences between the USA and China regarding the effects of LMX on employee voice, TMX, job satisfaction and ECCS.

The research should be extended with more than two national cultures to increase the generalizability of the research findings. Primary implication is that leader in China, and the USA should seek to build LMX quality to reap organizational benefits.

This study can help global hospitality firms develop management strategies effectively.

The study’s findings provide researchers with a better understanding of the LMX framework across USA and Chinese cultures. It also verifies the underlying relational effects among LMX and its outcomes across different nations, thus offering global hospitality organizations best management practices across cultures. Further, this study seeks to fill gaps in previous LMX and employee voice studies by providing robust explanations of the cultural influences on LMX framework across nations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what key competencies and characteristics of teachers are needed for integrated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teaching and to investigate teachers’ perceptions on how important those competencies are and how often they are executed.

An exploratory sequential mixed methods approach was used to investigate key characteristics of integrated STEM teaching competencies and the level of their importance and performance as perceived by teachers. By using behavioral event interview technique, qualitative data were collected from professional secondary teachers in science, math and technology subjects. An instrument was constructed based on the result of qualitative research; and a survey was conducted with 48 STEM teachers working in South Korea. The mean values between importance and performance of integrated STEM teaching competencies were compared. A perceived importance level of each item was compared with a practice level by using importance-performance analysis.

As a result of qualitative research, in total 21 items were constructed as detailed characteristics of each domain of integrated STEM teaching competencies, which provide insights about teachers’ perceptions of teaching competencies that are critical for integrated STEM education. A comparison of means between importance and performance of integrated STEM teaching competencies showed that whereas teachers considered each of these items to be of significant importance in their overall evaluation of the integrated STEM teaching competencies, they are not performing at a level that reflects the assigned importance.

This research results provide information for future research on how to implement an integrated STEM education initiative at the secondary school level, for planning teacher training programs, pre-service teacher education and related educational policies.

South Korea has focused on integrated STEM education to raise talented human resources in the fields of science and technology. However, many teachers have experienced serious difficulties and troubles in executing integrated STEM education. It is necessary to figure out key competencies and characteristics of teachers to facilitate integrated STEM teaching.

This review deals with the pros and cons of ultraviolet (UV) radiation on human beings and the role of textile clothing and the chemicals used for textiles to protect from their harmful effects.

UV radiation (UVR) which has further divided into UVA, UVB, and UVC. Almost 100% of UVC and major portion of UVB are bounced back to stratosphere by ozone layer while UVA enters the earth atmosphere. Excessive exposure of solar or artificial UVR exhibit potential risks to human health. UVR is a major carcinogen and excessive exposure of solar radiation in sunlight can cause cancer in the lip, skin squamous cell, basal cell and cutaneous melanoma, particularly in people with the fair skin.

This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the harmful effects of UVR on human skin, factors affecting UV irradiance and factors affecting UV protection offered by textile clothing.

Effect of fiber properties, yarn properties, fabric construction, fabric treatments and laundering has been reviewed along with the identification of gaps in the reported research. A comparison of inorganic and organic UV absorbers has also been given along with different testing and evaluation methods for UV protective clothing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether mutual funds (MFs) take positions in companies that subsequently engage in M&As and whether fund managers adjust portfolio holdings in the same direction as wealth creation from mergers. Further, the study is the first to examine the relation between active trading surrounding M&As and risk-adjusted performance in MFs.

The sample includes mergers conducted by publicly traded acquirers of public and private targets over 2003–2016. Several measures of MF managerial activeness in M&As are introduced: merger trading intensity (proportional change in fund’s holdings of M&A stocks), active merger weight (deviation of the fund’s actual weights in M&A stocks and value weights) and active merger trading (deviation of the fund’s actual weights in M&A stocks from the average weights in M&A stocks across the funds within the same Center for Research in Security Prices objective).

Fund managers who are more vested in the firms engaged in M&As and who are more active in their trades of M&A firms generate higher contemporaneous and subsequent risk-adjusted performance, indicative of managerial skill. Active M&A trading effect on performance is economically meaningful.

This is the first study to examine whether previously documented predictive power of active institutions regarding M&As’ profitability leads to higher risk-adjusted returns for MF investors. The study introduces several measures to gauge how actively fund managers trade companies engaged in M&As and contributes to the literature on MF managers’ ability to pick stocks.

The purpose of this article is to challenge the balanced budget practices of U.S. state governments and offer alternatives that may lead to better fiscal, economic and policy outcomes. We contend that the norm of balance may be leading U.S. states to make fiscal decisions that result in less-than-ideal outcomes, especially during economic downturns.

This is a normative article. We examine the scholarly evidence regarding balanced budget practices to assess the appropriateness of balanced budget norms. We also examine the fiscal rules followed by Eurozone countries to draw potential lessons for U.S. states.

We conclude that state governments should move away from strict norms of budget balance and seek more flexible approaches. We suggest that instead of following strict rules and norms of balance, U.S. states should consider implementing escape clauses, debt and deficit ceilings, and fiscal councils. We also suggest that the Federal Reserve be open to lending directly to states during fiscal crises to ensure that states have access to affordable credit.

The balanced budget norm has become ingrained in U.S. state budgeting practices, so much so that public officials and scholars alike rarely question it. The novel contribution of our article is to question this practice in a systematic way and propose alternative approaches.

The purpose of the study is to examine whether analyst coverage responds to changes in investor information demand for a firm and to test whether certain investor or firm characteristics moderate this association.

The authors model analyst activeness (AA) as a function of institutional investors' information demand, proxied by news readership on Bloomberg terminals and retail investors' information demand, proxied by the Google Search Volume Index (GSVI). Additionally, the authors take several steps to mitigate concerns about reverse causality that may confound the findings.

Results suggest that analysts respond to information demand shocks, but partially revert their coverage after the demand shock subsides. Furthermore, the results suggest that analysts cater their coverage more towards institutional investors than to retail investors. Evidence also suggests that analysts are more responsive to investors interested in firms with tech stock characteristics. Finally, the authors find evidence that specialist analysts respond more to institutional investors while generalist analysts respond more to retail investors.

The authors are the first to empirically examine the extent to which analysts cater to investor information demand. This is a vital topic to study because analysts are one of the primary sources of information for market participants. Understanding an analyst's motivation for providing information will help to facilitate market efficiency.