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Public library issues are often described as being of low political priority. Yet circumstances differ for different communities; public library issues may receive varying political attention. The purpose of this paper is to study how Swedish public library managers describe local politicians’ attention to public library issues and to identify which municipal circumstances, such as political organization, population, and finances, seem to matter for how local politicians’ attention is described.

The empirical data were collected through a web-based questionnaire sent to all public library managers in Sweden. To identify the described political attention, a content analysis was done. A multinominal logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze the municipal circumstances that seem to matter for how political attention is described.

A small majority of public library managers described the local political attention as strong or quite strong. Three factors seem to matter for how the attention is described: political organization, existence of a library plan, and population size. In the discussion personal factors, such as the politicians’ personal interest and public library managers’ experience, are brought up as possibly being of considerable importance.

Several studies have been conducted on how politicians perceive public libraries; in these studies, the politicians are mainly treated as a unified group. This paper shows that the political approach to public library issues is described as different in different municipal circumstances.

The purpose of this paper is to address the impact of the subjective evaluation of job characteristics on voluntary mobility, the impact of voluntary mobility on changes in these job characteristics, and differential education and gender patterns.

Ordered and multinominal logistic regression analysis and longitudinal panel analysis.

Dissatisfaction with one's wage, the match between job content and personal capacities, working hours, and the job in general cause voluntary external mobility. The latter two also increase the odds of voluntary internal mobility. Voluntary internal and external mobility in turn decreases dissatisfaction with several job characteristics. The higher the educational level, the weaker the impact of dissatisfaction with working hours on voluntary internal mobility. For women, wage dissatisfaction has a stronger impact on voluntary external mobility than for men. Moreover, dissatisfaction with the number of working hours and the job in general more often cause voluntary internal mobility for women than for men. The revenues of changing positions within or between firms, however, do not substantially differ across education and gender.

This paper shows that subjectively evaluated job characteristics are important push factors and result in voluntary mobility, and in some cases for women to a stronger degree than for men. Even though it could be expected that returns to voluntary mobility are lower for women and lower educated individuals, they do not differ substantially from the returns that men and higher educated workers receive.

In a technological era driven by coding, programming and artificial intelligence (AI), there is more need than ever to develop computing skills and knowledge for non-specialist students. Nonetheless, the literature on computer science teaching methods of non-scientific majors is not as comprehensive as that of scientific ones.

Pedagogically, the authors designed and implemented prototyping from John Dewey's pragmatic epistemological lens. Using a mixed methods approach, the authors tested the effectiveness and efficiency of this approach within the same course over four semesters across four academic years.

As an epistemological pedagogic device, prototyping facilitated learning by doing and experimenting and stimulated graduate students' self-directed learning, engagement and their overall ownership of the learning and teaching process, changing their role from being merely passive recipients of “strange, awkward and unfamiliar” knowledge to active constructors of “relevant and exciting” content knowledge. Such a change was reflected in the significant progress students made, driven by their commitment, motivation and enthusiasm, irrespective of their prior knowledge and age (Generations X, Y and Z). Prototyping also served as an avenue for a “Deweyian Reflection”, where graduate students, after internalizing the acquired computing skills and knowledge, started transferring such skills and knowledge to their professions (journalism and public relations (PR)) and daily practices.

Findings from this study will add to the literature review on this subject matter and will inform future case studies in computer science education for graduate students from non-scientific backgrounds.

This paper reveals that learning by doing/experimenting needs to be accompanied by in-depth reflection to enable students to transfer the acquired knowledge and skills to other settings and contexts beyond that of the lesson, task, or project in hand.

There is little research published on introductory programming courses offered to non-specialized students (i.e. students from non-scientific backgrounds). This study contributes to the body of research on how to effectively engage these students in programming courses informed by John Dewey's pragmatic lens/epistemological lens.

A tendency that employees do not frequently switch between different activity settings was reported in previous studies, which are opposed to underlying assumptions of activity-based working (ABW) offices. Although ABW is increasingly becoming a standard office concept, employees’ switching behaviour has not been studied in depth. This study aims to understand employees’ switching behaviour by identifying reasons (not) to switch and various influencing factors of switching behaviour.

An online survey was conducted across Switzerland and Belgium, and 124 respondents participated in the questionnaire. The mismatch model was developed to examine whether the misfit between either activity or preference and work environment leads to switching to another place in the office.

Results show that most of the respondents switch multiple times a day, which runs counter to the previous studies. Furthermore, this study presented clear evidence that mandatory switching frequency is independent of various factors presented in the study, indicating that the distinction between mandatory and voluntary switching is valid. Besides, results identified privacy, acoustics, distraction, proximity to team/colleagues as reasons to switch and as reasons not to switch, place preference/attachment, proximity to the team were determined.

This study contributed to better understanding switching behaviour by defining, distinguishing switching behaviour, identifying reasons (not) to switch and influencing factors of switching frequency. In addition, this study compared the misfit between activity and environment and the misfit between preference and environment as push factors leading to switching behaviour. These findings can provide more knowledge of switching behaviour to workplace or facility management practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of strategic orientations and managerial characteristics on the performance of wine businesses in the US wine industry. Also considered is the power of firm size as measured by production and firm age since founding, as moderating variables that could attenuate or heighten their impact.

Data were gathered via an online survey, where 306 representatives of the US wineries responded. Data are analyzed using descriptive statistics, multinomial logistic regression, cross-tabulations and Pearson chi-square (χ²) analysis.

Wine businesses that reported increased sales and profits over the previous three years made significant changes to organizational structure and staffing levels. Wineries that reported flat or decreasing sales and profits were less apt to make changes in organizational structure or staffing levels. Firm age was found to mediate performance in terms of incremental sales and profit growth; firm size was found to mediate only incremental profit growth.

Developing skills in marketing, strategic planning and entrepreneurial thinking to build a defensible industry position and to create the staffing and structure to support that position appear to be of great importance to wine businesses.

This study develops and tests a model investigating how firm size and age impact strategic orientations and managerial characteristics on the performance of the US wine businesses. This study investigates which strategic orientations and managerial characteristics wine businesses need to be successful in the future.

The scant literature on MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) tourists’ gambling behavior calls for a need to explore how their decision to gamble (hereafter, “gambling decision”) may unfold. Consequently, several questions germane to the inter-relationships among event tourists’ characteristics, casinos attributes, and gambling behaviors remain largely unaddressed. This paper aims to address the void in the literature by investigating event participants’ gambling decision.

Data were collected based on two samples, and a multilevel design was used to test the proposed model. Demographic and event-related participant characteristics were examined as antecedents of gambling decision at the individual level. Event goers’ accommodation characteristics such as brand equity and type of hotel were explored as cross-level effects on the individual-level factors and relationships.

Results of the study illustrate a joint influence – in terms of both direct and moderating effects – of individual-level and organizational-level characteristics on gambling decision. In particular, brand equity moderates the relationships leading from demographic and event-related characteristics to gambling decision.

The inter-relationships among events, accommodations and casinos present an opportunity for hospitality practitioners to better integrate these three services in a more coherent experiential offering for the ever-demanding MICE attendees. Findings also help practitioners to justify their targeting strategy.

The proposed framework presents the dynamic nature of the hospitality industry in which the event, hotel and casino sectors are interdependent, a picture hitherto prevented by the single-level oriented nature of gambling and hospitality research which largely focuses on the individual perspective. Given the dynamic nature of the hospitality industry, the findings elucidate a complex interdependency of customer needs.

This study aims to synthesize theoretical and empirical studies on the food dimension of developments in cultural omnivorousness. Cultural omnivorousness is an antithesis which Peterson developed against Bourdieu's stratification theory that emerged in 1992, and it has been the subject of scientific research in different dimensions, including literature, music, art and food.

In this study, databases were systematically searched to identify publications on cultural omnivorousness and food. The data obtained in the study was appraised using the checklist of preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA).

This study concluded that research on cultural omnivoriusness and food is often investigated from a demand perspective. Findings indicated that the relationship between food and cultural omnivorousness is focused on the axis of eating out, restaurant types and preferences, regions where restaurants are located, liked/preferred food, vegetarianism, the healthy/unhealthy state of food, locality and economic value of preferred food. Moreover, comparing the reviewed study results, it was identified that multiple regression was mostly used in quantitative research, and content analysis was benefited in qualitative research.

The reviewed studies were limited to articles with open access and peer-reviewed journals over the period 1990–2020. In addition, this study adopted a qualitative research approach. Another limitation of the research is that it only examined cultural omnivorousness in terms of food.

It is noticed that the results of the research conducted regarding the relationship between cultural omnivorousness and food vary by countries and cities. The reason for this situation might be the different historical processes and development levels of the countries and the difference in the symbols represented by food in this process. Additionally, in practical terms, this research offers some implications for how the relationship between cultural omnivorousness and food can be used by supply. Restaurants from a consumer perspective and destinations from a tourist perspective can use cultural omnivorousness as a strategic element in their marketing planning.

The literature on cultural omnivorousness is used to make sense of a striking phenomenon, namely the tastes/likes of individuals in the middle and upper classes. However, there has not been found such an examination of food and its use in cultural omnivorousness studies. This article fills the identified gap, adding to the discussion on food and cultural omnivorusness and provides a related research agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the efficiency determinants of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the context of Latin American airlines based on business-related variables commonly found in the literature. The idea is to identify preferable potential airline matches in light of fleet mix, ownership structure and geographical proximity.

In order to achieve the objective, all possible combinations of M&A pairs are considered in the analysis, which is developed in a two-stage approach. First, the M&A Data Envelopment Analysis model efficiency and returns-to-scale estimates are computed. Then, robust regression and multinomial logistic regression are respectively used to discriminate these estimates in terms of such business-related variables.

The results reveal that these different contextual variables significantly impact virtual efficiency and returns-to-scale levels. Private ownership, passenger focus and a better match between aircraft size and demand for flights appear to be key drivers for merged airline efficiency.

The study makes theoretical contributions, though limited to analyzing Latin American airlines only. The use of bootstrapped robust/multinominal logistic regression, compared to the methods adopted by previous literature studies, generates more accurate and robust results related to the efficiency drivers due to its special feature and ability to allow the discrimination of increasing, decreasing, and constant returns to scale in light of a given set of contextual variables.

This study examines the pure effect of the merging activity on efficiency gains. Not only private ownership but also a hybrid public–private ownership has a positive influence on virtual efficiency, suggesting an important governmental role in promoting M&A in the airline industry.

The authors present an original take on the issue of airline mergers by exploring what are the major drivers possibly involved in efficiency gains of potentially merged (virtual) airlines. The authors identify preferable potential airline matches where efficiency gains would be positive in light of business-related variables such as fleet mix, ownership structure and geographical proximity. The analysis also includes an assessment of the impact of contextual variables such as cargo type, ownership structure and geographical proximity in relation to the strategic fit of mergers considering the resulting efficiency and returns-to-scale scores of virtually merged airlines. To the authors’ knowledge, no previous research has addressed these issues in Latin American airlines. Further research directions for this industry are also discussed.

India has shown good progress in maternal health outcome indicators. However, an area for improvement is to ensure all deliveries take place in institutions under the supervision of skilled birth attendants. This paper attempts to identify the factors that affect institutional deliveries using nationally representative National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. Further, the authors investigate the factors contributing to the wealth-based inequality in institutional deliveries.

To address the first aspect of identifying the factors associated with undergoing an institutional delivery, the authors have used logistic and multinominal logistic models. The explanatory variables are broadly socio-economic indicators of the mother and a few other household characteristics. Further, the concentration index and regression-based decomposition were used to carry out an inequality analysis in the institutional deliveries across different wealth groups.

The authors found that women belonging to poor households, backward social groups and rural areas have significantly fewer odds of undergoing an institutional delivery. Age and education level of the mother, number of antenatal visits during pregnancy and place of residence (urban/rural) have contributed to the inequality in institutional deliveries in 2005–2006. However, the inequality due to these factors went down drastically in 2015–2016.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is a distinct attempt to use pooled data of the NFHS-3 [2005–2006] and NFHS-4 [2015–2016] in identifying factors contributing to a woman undergoing an institutional-based delivery. The study also decomposes the wealth-based inequality in the factors contributing to having an institutional delivery and analyses the contributions to inequality across the two time periods.

This study aims to examine internal and external factors as well as main obstacles to managers’/owners’ participation in education and training.

The sample comprises managers of 151 Bulgarian predominantly micro- and small-size enterprises. The data was gathered in 2020 through direct standardized interviews at the respondent’s workplace. This study uses quantitative estimation methods including binominal and multinominal logistic regression as well as nonparametric testing.

Regarding the findings in the relevant studies, the results confirm that the larger firm's size, the existence of human resource management strategy and practices as well as learning-oriented culture stimulate employer-financed management training. The lack of trainers with relevant need-specific expertise appears to be a major barrier. Additionally, the outputs highlight the role of other important determinants not being extensively discussed so far such as the level of development of the region in which the company operates, involvement in R&D and innovation activity as well as the issue of trust in trainer.

This study provides insights into (under)investments in continuing vocational training which might lead to practical implications for businesses, education and government policy in lifelong learning. Moreover, this study focuses on a country with one of the lowest participation rates in adult education across Europe which allows for a better understanding of similar examples.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper examining determinants of management training in Bulgaria and one of the few in the European context. It gives support to the existing literature but adds new findings as well.