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This article investigates labour flexibility in the Australian hotel industry. It identifies the different forms of labour used and attempts to provide a theoretical framework that accounts for changes in the pattern of hotel labour utilisation. In the hotel context, decisions concerning the allocation of tasks and labour are made at departmental level through a process of departmentalization where different forms of labour are utilized. The aim is to restructure the supply, effort, timing and intensity of work on a 'just in time' basis. The article suggests that the reorganization of hotel labour markets cannot be explained by a straightforward core-periphery model, rather, the flexibilisation of hotel labour reflects attempts to restructure working time, payment systems and labour costs in the context of broader cost minimization strategies. The implications of the findings at the level of public policy are discussed.

In the long term, all organisations may be temporary. Some, however, are more temporary than others. Temporary organisations are designed not so much with an eye on enduring as on accomplishing a specific task. In this chapter, the authors explore paradoxes, understood as persistent mutually defining oppositions that occur at the intersection of ‘the temporary’ and ‘the enduring’. To do so, the authors discuss the concept of memory, which we use to explore the process of preserving and reproducing memories of people and events as a bridge between the temporalities of organising that are past and were never intended to endure, and those that are ongoing. By reconstructing one case of the European Capital of Culture initiative, the authors discuss memory as critical to temporary organisations in the sense that temporary organisations always have a memory that affords continuity: hence are enduring. The authors argue that there is endurance in the temporary and temporariness in endurance: expressing the paradoxical essence of organising.

Temporary organisations are time-limited organisations that are created with a deliberate termination point. Temporary organisations can increase flexibility, allow for innovative and transformative activities with less resource commitment, and reflect a ‘Zeitgeist’ of acceleration and time limitation in society. They also give rise to tensions and paradoxes that require new adaptive and coordinative practices. Research on temporary organisations has moved from primarily exploring the distinction between temporary and permanent organisations to using temporary organisations to study a range of phenomena such as temporality, acceleration, identity, and attachment–detachment dilemmas. This volume reflects this new orientation. We map empirical phenomena along the lines of events, projects and networks, and explore three conceptual themes that run through the nine chapters that comprise this volume: (1) temporality in temporary organisations; (2) the interaction between temporary and permanent organisations; and (3) the strategies and practices that temporary organisation develop in response to tensions and paradoxes.

How do organizations respond to negative feedback regarding their innovation activities? In this chapter, the authors reconcile contradictory predictions stemming from behavioral learning and from the escalation of commitment (EoC) perspectives regarding persistence under negative performance feedback. The authors core argument suggests that the seemingly contradictory psychological processes indicated by these two perspectives occur simultaneously in decision makers but that the design of organizational roles and reward systems affects their prevalence in decision-making tasks. Specifically, the authors argue that for decision makers responsible for an individual project, responses given to negative performance feedback regarding a project are dominated by self-justification and loss-avoidance mechanisms predicted by the EoC literature, while for decision makers responsible for a portfolio of projects, responses to negative performance regarding a project are dominated by an under-sampling of poorly performing alternatives that behavioral learning theory predicts. In addition to assigning decision-making authority to different organizational roles, organizational designers shape the strength of these mechanisms through the design of reward systems and specifically by setting more or less ambiguous goals, aspiration levels, time horizons of incentives provided, and levels of failure tolerance.

This chapter aims to establish the relation of luxury tourism to sustainability and questions whether tourism in its current form is not itself a luxury. By analysing consumer travel motivation and demands of luxury tourism, we examine the impact of these perceptions and ask whether Anthropocene tourism does not by definition have a negative impact on the environment. A new concept of luxury has developed clearly illustrated by a move from Maslow’s (1943) ‘esteem’ to the top tier of ‘self-actualisation’ as reflected in Pearce and Lee (2005) Travel Career Ladder and top tier of personal fulfilment. This move has led to a decline in physical trophy collection, but rather the desire for luxury is taking on a new definition more about a perception of environmental connection, personal fulfilment and finding a brand or experience that shares similar values to the consumer. The commodification of nature has led to new forms of tourism concentrating on connecting to places, people and causes. An analysis of tourism growth impact in the Global North and South, and neo-colonisation in tourism highlights the contradictions within sustainable goals and tourism. It is increasingly difficult to categorise tourism as sustainable or unsustainable, luxury or non-luxury, but rather this chapter questions whether tourism itself has become an unsustainable pandemic and an indefensible luxury.