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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 8 October 2018

Michael O’ Regan

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the backpacker label by reconstructing it using the historical antecedent of drifting. Following the deconstruction of backpacking’s…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the backpacker label by reconstructing it using the historical antecedent of drifting. Following the deconstruction of backpacking’s near past, the author build a clearer conceptual foundation for backpacking’s future.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is framed by scenario planning, which demands a critical review of the backpacking and an appreciation of its history in order to understand its future.

Findings

Backpacking, ever evolving, remains difficult to articulate and challenges researchers to “keep up” with its complexity and heterogeneity. This paper argues that researchers must learn more about how backpacking “works” by opening a dialogue with its past, before engaging in further research. The paper finds that a poor conceptualisation of backpacking has led to a codification of backpacker criteria.

Practical implications

Backpacking remains a research topic which draws disparate researchers using criteria that produces disparate results and deviations. By understanding its past, researchers will be better placed to explore the emancipatory impulses that drive backpackers today and in the future.

Originality/value

This papers’ value lies in the retrospection process which explores backpacking’s near past so as to “make sense” of present research and present scenarios for it is the immediate future. The paper re-anchors backpacking by investigating the major historical, social and cultural events leading up to its emergence.

Details

Journal of Tourism Futures, vol. 4 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2055-5911

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 December 2021

Michael O’ Regan, Noel B. Salazar, Jaeyeon Choe and Dimitrios Buhalis

As tourism destinations grapple with declines in tourist arrivals due to COVID-19 measures, scholarly debate on overtourism remains active, with discussions on solutions that…

Abstract

Purpose

As tourism destinations grapple with declines in tourist arrivals due to COVID-19 measures, scholarly debate on overtourism remains active, with discussions on solutions that could be enacted to contain the excessive regrowth of tourism and the return of “overtourism”. As social science holds an important role and responsibility to inform the debate on overtourism, this paper aims to understand overtourism by examining it as a discursive formation.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper explores recurring thematic threads in scholarly overtourism texts, given the phrases coherence as a nodal-point is partially held in place by a collective body of texts authored by a network of scholars who have invested in it. The paper uses interdiscursivity as an interpretative framework to identify overlapping thematic trajectories found in existing discourses.

Findings

Overtourism, as a discursive formation, determines what can and should be said about the self-evident “truths” of excessive tourist arrivals, the changes tourists bring to destinations and the range of discursive solutions available to manage or end overtourism. As the interpellation of these thematic threads into scholarly texts is based on a sense of crisis and urgency, the authors find that the themes contain rhetoric, arguments and metaphors that problematise tourists and construct them as objects in need of control and correction.

Originality/value

While the persistence of the discursive formation will be determined by the degree to which scholarly and other actors recognise themselves in it, this paper may enable overtourism scholars to become aware of the limits of their discursive domain and help them to expand the discourse or weave a new one.

设计/方法论/方法

本文探讨了过度旅游研究文本中反复出现的主题线索, 鉴于这些短语连贯性作为一个节点, 由学者们组成的网络所研究的一组文本所组成。本文将互辩作为一个解释框架来识别现有语篇中重叠的主题轨迹。

目的

随着旅游目的地应对因新冠病毒−19措施而导致的游客人数下降, 关于过度旅游的学术辩论仍然活跃, 通过讨论可以制定的解决方案, 以遏制旅游业的过度再生和“过度旅游”的再现。由于社会科学在有关过度旅游的辩论中扮演着重要的角色和责任, 本文试图通过将其作为一种话语形式进行考察来理解过度旅游。

结果

作为一种话语形式, 过度旅游展现了过量游客所带来的不言而喻的“真相”、游客给目的地带来的变化以及可用于管理或结束过度旅游的一系列解决方案。由于这些主题线索在学术文本中的质询是基于危机感和紧迫感, 我们发现这些主题包含修辞、论据和隐喻, 使游客感到困惑, 并将其构建为需要控制和纠正的对象。

创新/价值

尽管话语形成的持续性将取决于学者和其他参与者在其中认识到自己的程度, 但本文可能会使过度旅游学者意识到其话语领域的局限性, 并帮助他们扩展话语或构建新的话语。

Propósito

A medida que los destinos turísticos lidian con la disminución de las llegadas de turistas debido a las medidas del COVID-19, el debate académico sobre el “sobreturismo” permanece activo, con discusiones sobre soluciones que podrían promulgarse para contener el crecimiento excesivo del turismo y el regreso del “sobreturismo”. La ciencia tiene un papel importante y una responsabilidad en informar sobre el debate del “sobreturismo”, este artículo busca entender el constructo de “sobreturismo”, examinándolo como una formación discursiva.

Diseño/metodología/enfoque

El artículo explora los hilos temáticos recurrentes en los textos académicos sobre el “sobreturismo”, dada la coherencia de las frases como un punto nodal, mantenida parcialmente en su lugar, por un cuerpo colectivo de textos escritos por una red de académicos, los cuales han invertido tiempo en ellos. El artículo utiliza la inter-discursividad como marco interpretativo a la hora de identificar trayectorias temáticas superpuestas que se encuentran en las disertaciones existentes.

Hallazgos

El sobreturismo, como formación discursiva, determina lo que puede y debe decirse sobre las “verdades” evidentes de la llegada excesiva de turistas, los cambios que los turistas traen a los destinos y la gama de soluciones discursivas disponibles para gestionar o acabar con el “sobreturismo”. Como la interpelación de estos hilos temáticos en textos académicos se basa en un sentido de crisis y urgencia, encontramos que los temas contienen retórica, argumentos y metáforas que problematizan a los turistas y los construyen como objetos que necesitan control y corrección.

Originalidad/valor

Si bien la persistencia de la formación discursiva estará determinada por el grado en que los académicos y otros actores se reconozcan en ella, este artículo puede permitir a los estudiosos del “sobreturismo” tomar conciencia de los límites de su dominio discursivo y ayudarlos a expandir el discurso o tejer un discurso nuevo.

Book part
Publication date: 23 September 2015

Abstract

Details

Tourism Education: Global Issues and Trends
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-997-3

Book part
Publication date: 23 September 2015

Michael O’Regan and Jaeyeon Choe

As its market and society open up, China has transformed itself from a closed agrarian socialist economy to an urban state and an economic force. This has released accumulated…

Abstract

As its market and society open up, China has transformed itself from a closed agrarian socialist economy to an urban state and an economic force. This has released accumulated tourism demand, led to the development of a diversified industry, and the spread of university and vocational courses in this field. However, the industry faces challenges to recruit and retain staff, with tourism education in higher education blamed for the shortfall in numbers and quality of candidates with suitable purpose, knowledge, and passion to serve. This chapter provides a background to the development of and problems facing tourism education in China, and suggests how to support student engagement and hence the future workforce.

Details

Tourism Education: Global Issues and Trends
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-997-3

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Start-ups and the Mobilization of Social Interactions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-609-2

Book part
Publication date: 17 February 2022

Marko Salvaggio

Drawing from two years of multi-sited fieldwork about international backpacking in Central America, I make important connections between the backpacking escape motive, the…

Abstract

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.

Details

Subcultures
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-663-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 September 2015

Cathy H. C. Hsu

This chapter explains the background of the book and begins with an introduction of Jafar Jafari’s tremendous contribution to tourism knowledge creation and education. This is…

Abstract

This chapter explains the background of the book and begins with an introduction of Jafar Jafari’s tremendous contribution to tourism knowledge creation and education. This is followed by a report on the content analysis of 573 tourism education related articles published in the past 10 years. Results indicated the need for philosophical discussion about the nature of tourism education and the popularity of teaching and learning approaches as a research topic. The two main sections of this book, namely philosophical issues in tourism education and experiential/active learning in tourism education, fit into these two identified issues. A synopsis of each chapter is provided next; and future directions for tourism education research are suggested.

Details

Tourism Education: Global Issues and Trends
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-997-3

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 April 2007

Brian Connelly, Michael A. Hitt, Angelo S. DeNisi and R. Duane Ireland

This paper proposes a methodology for governing expatriate assignments in the context of corporate‐level objectives.

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper proposes a methodology for governing expatriate assignments in the context of corporate‐level objectives.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach taken is to envisage expatriate managerial assignments within the theoretical framework of agency theory and the knowledge‐based view of the firm. The paper begins with the view that knowledge acquisition and integration is a primary goal for most expatriate assignments. The relationship between expatriate managers and multinational corporation (MNC) headquarters from an agency perspective are considered and the notion of a “knowledge contract” as a means of governing that relationship is discussed. Four corporate‐level international strategies available to MNCs (global, international, transnational, and multidomestic) are then examined and the extent of agency problems under each strategy is discussed.

Findings

The paper makes specific predictions about the type of knowledge contract that is most likely to address agency problems for each corporate strategy.

Originality/value

This research extends agency theory by introducing the knowledge contract as a means of managing agency concerns. This offers a broader range of contract alternatives, moving researchers beyond traditional agency theoretic prescriptions. The research also contributes to the literature on expatriate management by integrating assignment success with research on corporate‐level international strategy. Few authors have recognized organizational strategy as an important unit of study in international human resource management. Doing so, however, has yielded a unique set of contingency relationships that would otherwise be obscured.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 45 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2006

David O'Donnell, Mairead Tracey, Lars Bo Henriksen, Nick Bontis, Peter Cleary, Tom Kennedy and Philip O'Regan

Following Marx and Engels' identification of the “essential condition of capital”, the purpose of this paper is to begin an initial critical exploration of the essential condition…

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Abstract

Purpose

Following Marx and Engels' identification of the “essential condition of capital”, the purpose of this paper is to begin an initial critical exploration of the essential condition of intellectual capital, particularly the ownership rights of labour.

Design/methodology/approach

Adopting a critically modernist stance on unitarist HR and OB discourse, and contextualised within a background on the stock option phenomenon and recent accounting regulation, the paper argues that the fundamental nature of the capital‐labour relation continues resiliently into the IC labour (intellectual capital‐labour) relation.

Findings

There is strong evidence that broad‐based employee stock options (ESOPs) have become institutionalised in certain firms and sectors – but the future of such schemes is very uncertain (post 2005 accounting regulation). Overly unitarist HR/OB arguments are challenged here with empirical evidence on capital's more latently strategic purposes such as conserving cash, reducing reported accounting expense in order to boost reported earnings, deferring taxes, and attracting, retaining and exploiting key elements of labour.

Research limitations/implications

Research supports the positive benefits of broad‐based employee stock ownership schemes. Further research on the benefits of such schemes and the reasons why they are or are not implemented is now required.

Practical implications

From the perspective of labour, nothing appears to have really changed (yet) in terms of the essential condition of intellectual capital.

Originality/value

This paper explicitly raises the issue of the ownership rights of labour to intellectual capital.

Details

Journal of Intellectual Capital, vol. 7 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1469-1930

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 4 August 2014

Jordi Comas

Networks and learning matter to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Networks and learning are also further elaborations on the exploration–exploitation (EE) dilemma…

Abstract

Networks and learning matter to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Networks and learning are also further elaborations on the exploration–exploitation (EE) dilemma. Ambidexterity, that is, managing this apparent dilemma, can be difficult as a result of many constraints. One of these constraints is that of mutually exclusive network structures. Consequently, ambidexterity is the ability to change networks, depending on need using mixed data on four small companies formed as part of an undergraduate management class, I hypothesize how specific network properties of the advice-seeking relationship, including density, cohesion, centralization, and embeddedness, affect two outcomes. Specifically, early exploratory learning is proposed to be positively affected by less-dense networks that maintain cohesion without centralization and do not have relations embedded in other relations. In contrast, later exploitative learning should be associated with denser networks that also have higher cohesion, higher centralization, and greater embeddedness. The results provide some support for these hypotheses and suggest further research in two areas that will benefit SMEs. One, how do early networks affect learning mode? Two, how does the ability to rewire networks provide the relational infrastructure to shift from exploration to exploitation – that is, to be ambidextrous in the face of the exploration–exploitation tradeoff?

Details

Exploration and Exploitation in Early Stage Ventures and SMEs
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-655-2

Keywords

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