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A recent population-wide study for Germany, where credit lines on current accounts are available to 80 percent of the population, finds that overdraft debt is more likely for people who give intuitive but incorrect answers on a cognitive reflection test. This suggests that those consumers in debt have poorer cognitive reflection and, thus, lack of self-control. The Germany study finds that “surprisingly, the level of income does not play a central role.” The purpose of this paper is to discriminate the consumers in terms of their income by considering two experiments.

In the first (pilot) experiment, the authors do not discriminate consumers in terms of income and, as result, replicate the Germany study. In a follow-up experiment, which assembles a high-quality sample of high-income consumers, the authors find debt can no longer be explained by poor cognitive reflection.

Apparently, high-income consumers treat debt as mere leverage, as companies do.

Not all consumer indebtedness can be caused by lack of self-control. High-income consumers are likely to contract debt as leverage. This resembles rational risk taking.

The objective of the present study is to assess the financial literacy levels of students at a Brazilian university and investigate how these levels are affected by profile characteristics and personality traits.

Data were collected using SurveyMonkey, and a link to the questionnaire was sent by e-mail. The questionnaire contains three blocks of questions: demographics, financial literacy and personality traits. Ordered logistic regression was applied to a sample of 1,312 students.

Younger participants, those with higher incomes and men were more likely to have a high level of financial literacy. The same was true of those who were less extrovert, i.e. assertive, sociable, optimistic and communicative students. These results contribute to the field by indicating which population segments should be prioritized in efforts to promote financial literacy.

To the best of our knowledge, no study has compared Financial Literacy and Personality Traits in Brazil, a developing country that is only beginning to develop national financial literacy strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to address a new method to evaluate the competitiveness of tourist destinations based on competitive performance from the consumers’ perspective. The main objective is to assess the sources of relative strength and weakness perceived in a destination, and to evaluate its performance vis-à-vis to the main competitors identified by tourists through measurement indexes.

The strengths and weaknesses of the focal destination were identified by plotting 12 tourism-specific variables (attractors) and 12 business-related variables in importance-performance matrix (IPA) grids. The set of destinations identified as “the main competitors” were built according to the frequency they were mentioned, and the indicators of competitiveness were estimated by averaging variables representing dimensions identified by exploratory-confirmatory factor analysis. The variables were aggregated into dimensions to permit comparisons in relation to the main competitors.

The results suggest that tourism-specific variables converge to “tourist attractions” and “conviviality,” and that business-related variables converge into “accessibility,” “infrastructure” and “macrostructure.” The competitiveness against competition was evaluated twice: by using an IPA grid to evaluate competition against “all others,” and by comparing the factors of performance across the most cited competitors. The results show that the focal destination surpasses most of its main competitors in conviviality, but has some deficiencies in tourist attractions, and that dimensions representing the business-related variables fit in the middle.

The authors acknowledge that competitive performance, used as surrogate for competitiveness, is fairly limited once it does not consider the supply side potential forces that also influence the destination competitiveness (DC) at large. But although limited to the demand side, the proxy used to assess (DC) is in accordance with previous literature.

The results have high value to DMO managers, especially to those ones involved in developing tourism attractions.

This research advances over previous works: by identifying the nearest competitors of a destination; and by representing the competitive distance between the focal destination and its main competitors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine why, despite the advantages they might gain by participating in regulation of teaching by law, Israeli teachers’ unions leaders abandoned the opportunity to obtain the right of regulation and instead preferred an ambiguous role.

This is a policy research study, involving documentary analysis, focusing on one specific bill and data from interviews with teachers’ union leaders and officials who participated in discussions on the bill, and/or in crucial negotiations concerning teaching regulation.

It was found that unions’ leaders preferred to leave the licensing process for teaching as an open-ended and constantly negotiable issue with their employer rather than assuming the role of gatekeeper, understanding that this gave them more space and power to maneuvre in future struggles. Consequently, only the Education Ministry determines who becomes a teacher.

These findings can inform educational policy makers and stakeholders, by giving them a glimpse into policy considerations. New knowledge is offered for the development of theory concerning teaching profession regulation and involvement of the teacher unions in these processes.

Policy makers may re-evaluate their interests as stakeholders in the education system, when they try to shape the profession through regulation of those who seek to become teachers.

The research sheds light on a hidden part of the policy-making puzzle that most studies do not explore and educational leaders prefer not to discuss especially when there is no proof of achievement, nor a public crisis.

In today’s hypercompetitive, digital-first, knowledge-based economy, organizational creativity has never been more important as a potential source of competitive advantage. The foundation stone for every innovation is an idea and all ideas are born of creativity. The innovation process thus starts with creativity and the new ideas it yields are ideally based on insights that will lead ultimately to novel outcomes (such as new products, services, experiences or business models) and thereby to a sustainable competitive advantage. In established businesses, until relatively recently, creativity was called on only for specific, often high-profile occasions, for ‘hackathons’ or for major ‘innovation jams’, but today it is an essential, everyday necessity of routine work. However, attaining the right level of creativity from within is a challenge for many organizations and so they need to establish an appropriate and effective way to import it into their teams, projects and, ultimately, culture. The arts are a pure, unadulterated form of creativity. Mindsets, processes and practices from the arts can give organizational creativity a significant boost and can potentially offset the creative deficit in an organization. Here, the illustrative cases and practices that demonstrate how the arts can have a positive impact on business are examined.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric technique of computing efficiencies of decision-making units using similar set of inputs to give similar set of outputs. The objective is to pick out inefficient units from a data set of similar units and thus analyse their performance amongst their peer group. Stock markets can be considered to be an economy’s barometer. Thus, evaluation of efficiency effectiveness of the companies operating at stock exchange is a valuable exercise. Further, if the inefficient units can be given a benchmark for improvement, they can increase their market value. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiencies of the Oil, Gas and Power (OGP) sector of India for the companies that form a part of the CNX Energy Index and CNX 500 Index of the National Stock Exchange of India.

A group of 24 units has been included in the study. DEA was applied for ranking the units as per their efficiency levels by computing their technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies (SE). It was observed that only nine units are efficient and the remaining 15 were inefficient. It was observed that ONGC is the most efficient unit and CESC Ltd is the least efficient unit in this group. Also in this group there are ten units that show inefficiency due to their scales of operations. Further, benchmarking for the inefficient units has also been done in terms of inputs/outputs and the targets are suggested. It was observed that some of the Public Sector Companies like NTPC are using more inputs compared to the other units from the same group for achieving the same efficiency.

The present study attempted a limited objective of establishing the technical, pure technical and scale inefficiencies of the companies operating in OGP sector in India and listed on National Stock Exchange with the help of the non-parametric technique of DEA and suggesting how they can strive to improve their performance. It is observed that 37.5 per cent are technically efficient as well as scale efficient, whereas 62.5 per cent are pure technically efficient. There are 42 per cent companies representing approximately half of the output and more than half of the input that have scale inefficiencies characterized by their PTE less than SE. Out of the efficient companies, ONGC appears to be the best whereas Essar Oil has a comparatively lower rank. Out of the inefficient companies, the worst performer is CESC Ltd. However, inspite of being the worst performer, this unit does not have the worst benchmarking targets. The units like Sterlite technologies and KSK energy ventures need to improve their profit by almost 1,000 per cent. These kind of targets are very difficult to attain. Hence these units need to improve their scale of operation. The managers of these units must take up this issue seriously and take measures to improve their productivity. The study also attempted benchmarking where various inefficient units have been suggested targets they need to scale to improve their efficiency. If addressed, they can have micro as well as macro benefits.

In the present paper, the analysis is restricted only to the OGP sector of Indian economy. The study can be further extended to various other sectors of Indian economy such as agriculture, telecommunications etc. This would help in the holistic analysis of the economy. The flag bearer efficient units would set up a benchmark for the improvement to the inefficient units that would help improve the developing economy of India.

An increase in productivity is the most crucial management objective for any industry. Assessing the performance of companies listed and traded in stock market is imperative for investors and financial managers. Researchers have widely studied the performance evaluation of listed companies. Establishing efficiency of stock markets as a whole as well as of the constituent companies has been subject of wide research, but to the understanding no study has been done on evaluating the efficiencies of the OGP sector of India. In the present study the authors have concentrated on companies, out of the universe of energy companies operating in India, which form part of the CNX Energy Index and CNX 500 Index of the National Stock Exchange of India. The reason is that they represent the Indian energy market pretty well.

Adequate vegetable consumption is fundamental to a healthy balanced diet; however, global compliance with recommendations is poor which is particularly important for young adults as they form food consumption habits. There is a growing interest in the circular economy of hospitality and sustainability of current dietary patterns in light of climate change and an expanding global population. The food value chain needs to be considered both vertically and horizontally where the research and development (R&D) investment is optimised by being “joined up” and not fragmentary; in addition, consumer trade-offs of health vs for example sensory appeal are taken into consideration. The purpose of this study was to identify factors predicting acceptance of vegetable dishes by young adults and present a roadmap that can be used for dish development and healthful marketing.

This study used the health belief model (HBM) as framework to investigate key factors that encourage vegetable intake by young adults using an online questionnaire sample of 444 enrolled in undergraduate programs at universities in Brazil.

Structural modelling showed that vegetable consumption frequency was positively influenced by Health concerns, Naturalness and Self-efficacy (including cooking skills), whereas Sensory factors and Familiarity demonstrated a negative loading that might be related to unpleasantness.

Globally, there is a strong need to promote the consumption of vegetables as a public health policy priority but also to ameliorate barriers to action that could be facilitated by availability, dish development and healthful marketing in hospitality operations.

Despite the significant interest from researchers and practitioners, the literature on project value measurement from the perspective of the customer is non-existent. This study aims to address this gap by developing and validating a scale to measure project value through a customer lens called the customer perception of project value scale.

A list of items was initially generated based on 762 sample responses through a systematic review of the literature and with the participation of specialists. Exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses and structural equation modelling were used to develop and validate the scale.

The authors formulated a four-dimension scale. The dimensions used to measure the second-order construct are customer centrality, process, delivery and cost-benefit. This was validated using a nomological structure.

The non-consensual nature of what is value in projects restricts the results of this study to the context of a specific group of stakeholders only, that is, the consumers of the projects. The authors also see limitations in the absence of competing scales, which do not allow the comparison of the instrument with alternative measures.

This study allows project managers and other professionals to measure a project’s perceived value from the customer’s point of view and manage the improvement of this perception.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose a scale to measure project value, which advances the literature on project management and value and contributes to academic knowledge and practice by measuring project value from the customer standpoint.