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The paper is a proof of concept (PoC) intervention study aimed for developing performance management (PM) practices in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the longer-term aim enabling the SMEs to improve their productivity. The intervention was designed and deployed by a collaborative quartet of academics, management consultants, accountancy firm and a commercial bank manager.

The paper firstly musters a set of initialising PM practices aligned to productivity improvement. These are utilised to design a knowledge transfer intervention for deployment with a set of manufacturing SMEs incorporating some associated productivity tools. The evaluation of the intervention utilised a case study approach founded on a logic model of the intervention to assess the development of the PM practices.

The intervention contributed to a partial development of the mustered practices and the productivity diagnostic based on the multi-factor productivity (MFP) abstraction and a data extraction protocol had the strongest impact. The study revealed the importance of the three interlaced factors: Depth of engagement, feedback opportunities and the intervention gradient (the increase of independent action from the participating SME's and the diminishment of the external intervention effort).

The case study is based on a limited number of individual SME's, and within just the manufacturing sector.

SME businesses will require a more sustained programme of interventions than this pilot to develop PM capability, and depth of engagement within the SME is critical. Professional stakeholders can be utilised in recruitment of firms for intervention programmes. Business can start developing PM capability prior to PMS implementation using the tools from this programme.

The productivity diagnostic tool, based on a synthesis of MFP and the performance pyramid, an array of potential initialising practices for PM capability and discovery of potential mechanisms for PM practice development.

Performance management (PM) remains one of the fundamental human resource practices in organisations today and is a dominant strategy adopted in managing employees. This paper aims to analyse extant research on PM conducted globally to inform research and practices in an African context.

A systematic review of 43 articles published in 22 journals ranked by the Australian Business Deans Council and Chartered Association of Business Schools was undertaken. The papers selected were limited to the past two decades (2001–2021) to focus primarily on contemporary practices.

The findings of this review indicate that PM continues to gain attention from African scholars and practitioners, though not as prominently as indicated within the broader global context. The review also exposed significant gaps in current research, including PM issues, theoretical or conceptual development and methodological approaches, which, if addressed, could inform future practices and research foci.

The primary limitations of this study are a focus on the most recent two decades of research into PM and the intention to direct learnings from this review of scholarly insight towards a focus solely on an African context. Thus, as interpretations of insights are based upon the perspective of how these can inform PM practices in Africa, a direct extrapolation of the findings to other contexts may not be appropriate.

This review of research conducted into PM globally in the past two decades has identified limited contributions from within the African context. This lack of contextual understanding may well be affecting the adoption and creation of globally recognised PM practices in Africa. As such, there is an opportunity to understand better the complexities associated with PM by embracing theories and formulating, testing and refining existing models to consider performance issues at more profound levels of analysis within an African context.

This study presents insights into global trends in PM research and practices not previously explored, highlighting a need for more contextualised research to progress Africa beyond current theoretical, conceptual and methodological limitations.

This study explores the various obstacles that female instructors and students confront in tourism education.

Utilizing qualitative research approaches and a thorough literature assessment, this study investigates women’s complex challenges in the academic and educational domains. The study examines the particular difficulties faced by female professors, such as work-life balance concerns, gender bias and limited opportunities for career advancement. Furthermore, the study also analyses the challenges that female students confront, including the threat of stereotypes, sexual harassment during internships and restricted access to networking and mentorship possibilities.

Findings illustrate that both female tourism academics and students face gender discrimination in academia and in the sector.

The findings may contribute valuable insights for policymakers, educators and stakeholders, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions and inclusive policies to create supportive environments for female lecturers and students in these departments.

This is the first study done in North Cyprus, which specifically analyzes gender inequality in tourism education. It is valuable as it emphasizes the significance of advancing gender equality in tourism and hospitality education.

This study aims to empirically examine the factors that affect mobile loyalty (m-loyalty) and its influence on customer reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging services. This study identified measurement items to assess the business users and individual users reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging services and test the relationship in the conceptual model. This study bridges a literature gap focusing on m-loyalty and its impact on customer reuse intention, which has not received attention previously.

To evaluate the influence of the factors, this study identified and extracted the items from past literature to develop the survey instrument. This study surveyed 600 respondents including business users and individual users from the Delhi-National Capital Region of India and applied the structural equation modelling to test the conceptual model.

The results revealed that satisfaction and m-loyalty have a direct effect on the business users and individual users’ reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services. This study found that satisfaction, usability, perceived value, commitment, trust and m-loyalty influence on business users reuse intention. This study indicate that enjoyment has an insignificant relationship on m-loyalty for business users followed by usability and enjoyment has an insignificant relationship on m-loyalty for individual users. Further, female gender does not moderate the relationship between satisfaction and business users reuse intention. The cognitive absorption and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) theories supported evaluating the association between the factors in the context of business and individual users reuse intention of mobile instant messaging service.

The empirical findings imply that all the factors except enjoyment have directly influenced the business users reuse intention of mobile instant messaging. The significant influence of usability factor on the business users reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging is the major variation between the validated models of business and individual samples. The results of influencing factors of m-loyalty and its impact on customer reuse intention are associated with cognitive absorption and the UTAUT theories.

Focus on these factors can be beneficial for the business users, managers, mobile instant messaging service providers and application developers to increase customer loyalty and reuse intention for the mobile instant messaging services. This research will facilitate mobile instant messaging service providers to keep their services market relevant and focus on user satisfaction in building applications for loyalty.

This research identified measurement items from earlier literature to identify, analyze and verify the relevance of these factors in m-loyalty and customer reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services and fill the gap in customer reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services literature.

Several studies have been conducted on social inequalities. Despite highlighting inequalities between the rich and poor, researchers often overlook the fact that disabled people in Africa are marginalised more than their counterparts elsewhere. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a theory and data analysis method, this study sought to answer two questions: (1) What is reported about the inclusion of disabled people in using digital media? (2) How is it reported? Twenty-two articles were purposively sampled: 15 from Newsday and 7 from The Herald published between 20 November 2017 and 24 September 2022. Findings indicate that the two papers exposed marginalisation of disabled people in an educative and informative way and had erudite analysis from disabled columnists. This was successful because the papers relied on the disabled community as sources of information and contributors of published material. The papers also engaged stakeholders such as corporates, government and civil society organisations. It is recommended that other newspapers and many forms of mass communication provide a representation of people with different forms of disabilities. Future studies could seek the views of disabled communities about their presentation in the digital media through disabled writers and providers of information.

This paper aims to outline the role of self-transcendent emotions (STEs) such as compassion, gratitude and elevation in the context of sustainable tourism. It proposes a research agenda for further investigation of these emotions as facilitators of value co-creation in sustainable tourism.

Drawing on the literature on the psychology of STEs, sustainable tourist behaviour and value co-creation, this paper pinpoints potential developments and challenges associated with STEs in the domain of sustainable tourism by following a service-dominant logic approach.

STEs are likely to have a profound impact on sustainable tourism leading to value co-creation and mitigating the risk of value co-destruction and value no-creation. They can facilitate value co-creation by shifting the focus of actors from their own selves towards others in the tourism ecosystem, shifting the focus from extrinsic to intrinsic motivations and increasing moral values. Moreover, STEs are expected to be contiguous and reciprocal, fostering value co-creation in sustainable tourism practices. However, extreme levels of STEs can lead to value co-destruction and value no-creation.

This paper highlights the role of STEs as facilitators of value co-creation in sustainable tourism, a facet that has been overlooked in the existing literature. Further investigation is necessary in different contexts such as transformative and regenerative tourism; societal or individual crises and failures and the applications of technologies such as the Metaverse and artificial intelligence.

本文概述了自我超越情感 (STEs）如慈悲、感恩和升华在可持续旅游环境中的作用。它提出了进一步研究这些情感作为可持续旅游中价值共创的促进因素的研究议程。

本文借鉴了有关自我超越情感心理学、可持续旅游行为和价值共创的文献, 通过遵循服务主导（S-D）逻辑方法, 指出了自我超越情感在可持续旅游领域的潜在发展和挑战。

自我超越情感很可能对可持续旅游产生深远影响, 促进价值共创, 减轻价值共毁和价值无创造的风险。它们可以通过将旅游生态系统中的行动者的关注点从自己转移到他人身上来促进价值共创; 将关注点从外在动机转移到内在动机; 增加道德价值观。此外, 自我超越情感预计会是连续和相互的, 促进可持续旅游实践中的价值共创。然而, 自我超越情感的极端水平可能导致价值共毁和价值无创造。

我们的论文突出了自我超越情感作为可持续旅游中价值共创的促进因素的作用, 这是现有文献中被忽视的一个方面。有必要在不同的背景下进行进一步研究, 如变革性和再生性旅游; 社会或个体的危机和失败; 以及元宇宙和人工智能等技术的应用。

Este artículo explica el papel de las emociones autotrascendentes (STEs por sus siglas en inglés), tales como la compasión, la gratitud y la elevación, en el contexto del turismo sostenible. Además, propone una agenda de investigación para profundizar en el rol de estas emociones como facilitadoras de la cocreación de valor en el turismo sostenible.

Basándose en la literatura sobre psicología de las STEs, comportamiento turístico sostenible y cocreación de valor, este artículo señala los posibles avances y retos asociados a las STEs en el ámbito del turismo sostenible, siguiendo el enfoque de la lógica dominante del servicio (S-D).

Es probable que las STEs tengan un profundo impacto en el turismo sostenible, lo que conducirá a la cocreación de valor y atenuara el riesgo de la codestrucción de valor y la no creación de valor. Las STEs pueden facilitar la cocreación de valor desplazando la atención de los agentes desde su propio yo hacia los demás en el ecosistema turístico; desplazando la atención de las motivaciones extrínsecas a las intrínsecas; y aumentando los valores morales. Adicionalmente, se espera que las STEs sean contiguas y recíprocas, fomentando la cocreación de valor en las prácticas de turismo sostenible. Sin embargo, unos niveles extremos de STEs pueden conducir a la codestrucción de valor y a la no creación de valor.

Nuestro artículo destaca el rol de las STEs como facilitadoras de la cocreación de valor en el turismo sostenible, una faceta que no ha sido explorada en la literatura existente. Es necesario seguir investigando en diferentes contextos como el turismo transformativo y regenerativo; las crisis y los fracasos sociales o individuales; y las aplicaciones de tecnologías como el Metaverso y la inteligencia artificial.