Search results

In June 1985 an Austrian wine producer was found sweetening low‐priced wine for export to Germany, with an illegal substance, diethylene glycol. Subsequent investigation found a very small percentage of Austrian producers doing the same thing. The “Anti Freeze” connotation caught the imagination of the media, particularly in Britain, which had a field day of “humorous” and often inaccurate stories. Within a few weeks, Austrian wine sales dropped disastrously. The author, both an interested observer as well as a participant in the ensuing campaign to re‐establish Austrian wines, examines the story of the scandal, and more importantly, the sequence of action that followed. In particular, the article looks at the setting up and operation of the Austrian Wine Marketing Service and the worth of such organisations.

The 1993 industry survey in this journal updated. Increasingly the Cyprus wine industry is turning its attention to the making of higher quality table wines, to satisfy an ever‐growing local market, comprised mostly of two million foreign tourist arrivals, 30,000 foreign residents and a slowly growing segment of Cypriot professional and business people. Despite the planting of new grape varieties and setting up of regional wineries near the vineyards, there is still a long way to go, before quality wines are a significant sector of production and for some years the Cyprus industry will depend on exports of low‐price bulk wines and spirits for survival and profit For the moment, though, 1994 was a good year overall and the transition of the industry is gathering pace. The author surveys the structure of the industry, developments in vine‐growing and wine‐making, current local and export marketing trends and future prospects.

The author examines the background to the very limited penetration into overseas markets like the U.K. by bottled table wine, diminishing sherry sales and low‐price exports of aromatics, in the context of the structure of the industry, the vines, the groves, wine‐makers and marketeers. Based on more than a year's study and marketing at all levels, he concludes that the Cyprus industry really has reached the cross roads and proposes some of the directions it should take. It must move quickly and positively.

The purpose of the study is to examine the way different motivational types from Self-Determination Theory (SDT) influence antecedents of customer satisfaction.

The findings in this study were generated with a quantitative design using path analysis on data collected at two stages during an extended service encounter.

Each motivation type played a unique and important role in influencing the antecedents of satisfaction, namely, positive and negative emotions and perceptions of service quality. As hypothesised, motives associated with higher levels of autonomy were consistently stronger predictors of positive emotions and service quality. The influence of motives on the antecedents did not change significantly over time, whereas significant differences were noted between all antecedents and satisfaction. The model explained 54 and 63 per cent of the variance in satisfaction in times one and two, respectively.

This is the first time that motivation as conceptualised from an SDT perspective has been applied to understanding the dynamic nature of customer satisfaction. The findings offer considerable opportunities for follow-up studies and the motivation types can provide practitioners with a stable and efficient segmentation option.

The purpose of this paper is to present contrasting approaches to the descriptive case study of tourism to the buried city of Plymouth, Montserrat, an example of the marketing and burying – the supply and demand – of apocalyptic dark tourism on the island.

A case study mixed-methods methodology is adopted, and findings are derived from tour guiding fieldwork, guide and tourist interviews, and an analysis of travel writing and tourism marketing campaigns.

Dark tourism is viewed as a contentious and problematic concept: it attracts and repels tourism to the former capital Plymouth, Montserrat. After 20 years of the volcano crisis, the islanders, government and Tourist Board are commemorating resilience living with the volcano and regeneration in a disaster scenario. Marketing and consumption approaches to dark tourism elucidate different facets to the case study of “the buried city” of Plymouth, Montserrat, and the Montserrat Springs Hotel overlooking Plymouth. The disjunct between these two types of approach to dark tourism, as well as the different criteria attached to working definitions of dark tourism – and the range of interests in apocalyptic dark tourism into the city and its surrounds – show some of the problems and limitations with theoretical and scalar discussions on dark tourism.

The paper’s implications are that both supply and demand approaches to dark tourism are needed to fully understand a dark tourism destination and to reconcile the disjunct between these two approaches and the perspectives of tourist industry and tourism users.

This is a descriptive dark tourism case study of a former capital city examined from both supply and demand perspectives. It introduces the apocalyptic to dark tourism destination analysis.

Recent scholarship has augmented Bandura's theory underlying efficacy formation by pointing to more proximate sources of efficacy information involved in forming collective teacher efficacy. These proximate sources of efficacy information theoretically shape a teacher's perception of the teaching context, operationalizing the difficulty of the teaching task that faces the school and the faculty's collective competence to be successful under specific conditions. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of three contextual variables: socioeconomic status, school level, and school structure on teacher perceptions of collective efficacy.

School level data were collected from a cross‐section of 79 schools in a Midwestern state. Data were analyzed at the school level using hierarchical multiple regression to determine the incremental variance in collective teacher efficacy beliefs attributed to contextual variables after accounting for the effect of prior academic performance.

Results support the premise that contextual variables do add power to explanations of collective teacher efficacy over and above the effects of prior academic performance. Further, of the three contextual variables school structure independently accounted for the most variability in perceptions of collective teacher efficacy.

A sample of 79 schools was considered small to accurately test a hypothesized model of collective teacher efficacy formation using structural equation modeling. That approach would have had the advantage of permitting the researchers to identify the relationships among the predictor variables and between the predictors and the criterion. Additionally, there was a concern of possible aggregation bias associated with aggregating collective teacher efficacy scores to the school level. Despite these limitations, the findings hold theoretical and practical implications in that they defend the theoretical importance of contextual factors as efficacy sources. Furthermore, formalized and centralized conditions conducive to promoting perceptions of collective efficacy in teachers are identified.

Extant collective efficacy studies have generally not operationalized Bandura's efficacy sources to include the effects of current context. This study does.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of farm income variability, farm size, and other socio‐demographic characteristics on the precautionary saving behavior of farm households and to estimate the influences of the identified factors on the amount of savings by self‐employed farm households.

Using 2003 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) data and a Double‐Hurdle procedure, the likelihood and the amount of savings by farm households are estimated.

An important empirical finding of this study is that variability in income plays an important role in explaining precautionary savings of US farm households. Findings suggest that farm households facing higher income risk save more and accumulate more wealth. It is indicated that several farm, operator, household, and demographic attributes contribute to the precautionary savings of farm households. In particular, results show that educational attainment by operator and spouses have positive impact on the decision to save. In addition, results from this study show that farms that specialize in cash grain are likely to have precautionary savings.

Farm households today are virtually indistinguishable from non‐farm households in their levels of income and diversity of employment. As a result, government policies that influence general economic conditions have much more profound impacts on farm families. Federal support of farm income warrants continued scrutiny. This paper shows that greater income uncertainty increases savings and wealth of farm households. Therefore, farm policies that reduce income variability or uncertainty will have an impact on precautionary savings and wealth of farm households.

Several studies have investigated savings of households; however, these studies are limited to entire US population, older Americans, or non‐self‐employed individuals in the USA. Little is known about the savings behavior of self‐employed US farm households owing to a lack of household survey data and because of the complex relationship between the farm household and farm business in terms of resource allocation (both capital and labor).

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate pre- and post-formulation findings with multi-disciplinary staff within two secure children’s homes (SCHs) in the North East of England.

Multi-disciplinary staff teams involved in formulation across two SCHs were administered pre- and post-formulation questionnaires. The pre- and post-formulation questionnaires focused on five domains: knowledge; confidence; motivation; understanding; and satisfaction with treatment plan.

A total of 338 pre- and post-formulation questionnaires were administered across 43 formulation meetings. The highest proportion of formulation attendees were: residential staff (44%); mental health staff (17%); case managers (12%); and education staff (9%). Paired samples t-tests showed significant post-formulation improvements across all domains including: knowledge [t(337) = 22.65, p < 0.001]; confidence [t(337) = 15.12, p < 0.001]; motivation [t(337) = 8.27, p < 0.001]; understanding [t(337) = 19.13, p < 0.001]; and satisfaction [t(337) = 18.81, p < 0.001].

The SECURE STAIRS framework has supported formulation developments across the Children and Young People’s Secure Estate. Preliminary findings within two SCHs suggest multi-disciplinary staff teams find psychologically informed formulation beneficial. Future directions are considered including future evaluation of young person involvement in formulation meetings.

There is a notable lack of existing research within the child and young people secure estate evaluating the impact of SECURE STAIRS trauma-informed care developments including the impact of team formulation. This paper adds to the evidence base.

This longitudinal research examines US symphony orchestra sector organizations to determine individual efficiencies in allocating resources (donations, governmental/private funding, etc.) for desirable outputs (concerts, educational programs, community outreach). It provides researchers and managers with a tool for identifying, assessing and mitigating organizational inefficiencies.

This study assesses relative efficiencies in performing arts organizations using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a widely-used nonparametric data-intensive benchmarking technique that determines an optimal “production frontier” of best-practice organizations among their peers and assesses their abilities to turn multivariate inputs into multivariate desired outputs.

This analysis highlights efficiency differences in a wide range of orchestras in converting available resources into performance-related outputs. It provides individual arts organizations with useful results for developing practical benchmarks to achieve organizational efficiency improvement.

This study provides constructive benchmarking guidance for improving efficiencies of relatively-inefficient organizations. Future analysis can expand the scope to utilize a two-stage DEA model to provide more specific guidance to arts organizations.

This pragmatic analysis enables arts/culture institutions to assess their organizational efficiencies and identify opportunities to optimize resources in producing social outputs for their target markets.

Efficiency improvements enable performing arts organizations to provide additional artistic/social services, with fewer resources, to larger audiences.

This research demonstrates the abilities of DEA analysis to assess both a sector and its individual organizations to determine efficiencies, identify sources of inefficiencies and assess longitudinal efficiency trends.

Long before calories and joules were used to indicate energy values in relation to food, popular belief had it that some foods could increase man's output of labour, his physical strength and endurance, even his fertility. The nature of the foods varied over the years. From earliest times, flesh foods have inspired men to “gird their loins” and “put on armour”, but too long at the feasting tables produced sloth of body and spirit. Hunger sharpens the wit, which makes one wonder if that oft‐quoted statement of poverty and hunger before the Great War—“children too hungry learn”—was quite true; it is now so long ago for most of us to remember. Thetruism “An army marches on its stomach” related to food in general and relating feats of strength to individual foods is something more difficult to prove. The brawny Scot owes little to his porridge; the toiling Irish labourer moves mountains of earth, not from the beef steaks he claims to consume, but for the size of the pay‐packet at the end of the week!