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Practical wisdom (PW; phronesis), as one of the human virtues, is experiencing a renewal in the contemporary management literature. The aim of this conceptual paper is first, to explore the core practices of managers and leaders in the literature and second, to demonstrate how PW can manifest itself in these practices.

The research follows the interpretivist research philosophy, inductive approach, qualitative method and the theory-building research strategy. The data collection method is a literature review. The practice ecosystem framework is applied to demonstrate the presence of PW in the core practices of managers and leaders.

The paper proposes a practice-based paradigm of management and leadership. From the literature study, envisioning, enabling, energizing, engaging and executing as five fundamental practices are identified.

The most significant literature was selected based on decisions of the author. Therefore, it might be that important sources were overlooked. The paper proposes future research questions, and it calls for an empirical validation of the proposed conceptual model in management and leadership practices context.

The practical implications for managers and leaders are in applying the framework developed in this paper as a tool or guidelines to cultivate PW in their practices. The paper offers implications for management education, traditional educational institutions and educational practitioners because they are the key influencers of wise thinking and actions of future managers and leaders.

The novelty of this paper is in making explicit how the eight features of PW can manifest themselves in the everyday actions of managers and leaders. Applying the practice ecosystem framework for this purpose is an original contribution.

The engineering construction standards in China play an important role in protecting the safety of the construction projects. They are the basic principles that standardize the construction activities and guarantee the quality of projects. However, there are many barriers that affect the adoption of the engineering construction standards. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the barriers that challenge the adoption of the engineering construction standards in China.

The research reveals the barriers that affect the implementation of the engineering construction standards in China through a literature review. Then this study uses factor analysis to analyze 12 indices which we get from a questionnaire to build explanations from the results.

According to this paper, four main brands of uncorrelated variables are derived which are the main challenges in implementing the engineering construction standards in China: management barriers, policy barriers, knowledge barriers and market barriers. This paper gives a clear classification of the barriers that the enterprises face while adopting the engineering construction standards in China.

This paper makes a contribution to the understanding of the barriers that affect the adoption of the engineering construction standards in China.

The purpose of this paper is to understand women’s experiences, acceptability and outcomes of using the medical termination of pregnancy (MTP). The study is conducted at nine reproductive health and family planning clinics at university hospitals as well as regional and provincial hospitals located in Bangkok and the locations within Thailand.

This is a descriptive research recruiting healthy women with pregnancy up to 63 days since the last menstrual period (LMP) who opted for MTP during 2012–2014.

A total of 443 women who were referred from the reproductive health networks voluntarily participated in the study. Overall, 92.6 percent of participants had a complete abortion. No serious adverse events were found for cases using misoprostol at home or at clinic. More than 98.3 percent of the women felt satisfied or very satisfied with the method. More than 80 percent of participants thought that the side-effects of the method were as expected or less than expected. More than 95 percent of the women recommended having MTP available in Thailand.

The introduction of MTP that uses a mifepristone and misoprostol regimen (Medabon®) in pregnancies up to 63 days, since LMP demonstrates that misoprostol can be safely used by women at home or at clinic. The administration of misoprostol at home reduces the number of hospital visits, which saves time and costs for traveling from home to the facility. In addition, women have more privacy and control over their bodies by self-administering misoprostol. The MTP’s introductory results also show that MTP service provision is well integrated into reproductive health and family planning services. It is useful for stakeholders who would be involved in design and planning of health system services before the MTP is made broadly available throughout the country.

This study revisits the Great Canadian Grain Logistics Crisis of 2013-14 to explore the competitiveness of the country's grain exports. An approach to comprehending the dilemmas of the international grain supply chain and trade, and national logistics policy in an era of multinational corporations, draws upon the literature on global value chain analysis. This analysis identifies both the grain industry's global and local dimensions. An important literature on the 'politics’ of the supply chain is also called into play to discuss who controls what aspects. This task of interpreting the various steps in Canada's grain logistics chain recognizes the key economic actors - producers, grain companies, railway companies, port terminal operators and export buyers - and political struggles between them as they each seek to maximize their self-interest. Policy implications for streamlining logistics operations are drawn from identifying where changes in the supply chain arrangements have gained or lost opportunities in export markets, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

An examination is made of developments in port dynamics since 1965. Initially, this task is addressed by studying changes in past port patterns using a simple descriptive model to accommodate shifts induced by containerization. Over time these changes have led to the reversal of the concentration and centralization of port activities. Then consideration is given to the behavior of stakeholders active in the contemporary port scene by elaborating a bipolar global-local analytical framework through an invocation of the hybrid concepts of glocalization and loglobalization. This analysis leads to an examination of emerging economies to gauge future trends in port dynamics following the dramatic emergence of China. Finally, there is a discussion of the need to go beyond inter-port competition to comprehend global production-distribution networks by exploring synergies between the supply chain and the total transport network to bring out parallels in the hub-and-spoke structure not only underpinning maritime activities but also air transport and telecommunications.

Discussions on tourism development address the urgent need to reduce the negative impacts of tourism on tourist destinations. Despite decades of trying to find potential ways to foster sustainability, however, current tourism development is still mainly driven by political interests and growth agendas. In spite of concepts intending to improve sustainable tourism development, negative dynamics, such as over-tourism and the exploitation of nature and local communities, dominate the current reality of tourism. This article focuses on the concept of degrowth as a potential solution for rethinking tourism policy and practices to ensure greater sustainability. Its aim is to explore the gap between these policies and the academic theories on instigating sustainable change, and the actual reality of the tourism industry, which is primarily driven by economic motivations such as growth.

To explore this dichotomy, this paper investigates the values of tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs. Small businesses are the most dominant group in the industry in terms of numbers. I contend that researching their viewpoint on current developmental trends could lead to valuable insights into how to tackle this gap between theory and reality. This paper also explores how the degrowth paradigm may promote sustainability in tourism, as well as the potential role that tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could play in this development. The discussion is illustrated by a case study based on interviews with tourism entrepreneurs in Iceland.

The findings indicate that various tourism stakeholders have different approaches to growth, with many tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs tending to embrace degrowth practices by acting according to their value base, albeit sometimes unconsciously. This focus on aspects other than growth could potentially encourage tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs to contribute to sustainable development.

The examples discussed in this paper are locally limited and cannot be generalized due to the small size of the interviewed sample group. The scalability of individual entrepreneurs’ impact is limited due to their small size.

The actions and values applied by these tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs demonstrate how degrowth can be manifest on a small scale: growth is only embraced up to a certain limit, so it oes not exceed social and environmental capacities; from that point on, community well-being plays the key role. This study demonstrates the untapped knowledge tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could provide to rethinking the tourism industry.

This study demonstrates the importance of shedding more light on ethical issues and values beyond growth in both academic and political discussions. Addressing tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs as smaller-scale actors of tourism degrowth could be a meaningful starting point for holistically rethinking tourism and give them a voice.

This research emphasizes untapped knowledge by acknowledging entrepreneurs and their potential for rethinking tourism development, concluding with recommendations for practice and policy.

Framed within global policy debates over the need for private financial flows to align with the capital requirements of the Paris Agreement, this paper examines UK asset managers in their approaches to disclosing and managing climate risk. This paper identifies and evaluates climate risk management practices among this under-researched investor group in their capacity to address fundamental behavioural obstacles to low-carbon investment.

This paper takes an inductive approach to document analysis, applying content and thematic analysis to the annual disclosures of the 28 largest UK asset managers (by assets under management), including the investment management arms of insurance and pension companies.

The main takeaway from this research is that today’s climate risk management strategies hold potential to effectively address traditionally climate risk-averse investor behaviour and investment processes in the UK asset management context. However, this research finds that the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategies to mitigate climate risks is a “grey area” in which climate risk management practices are undefined within broad sustainability and responsible investment agendas. In doing so, this paper invites further research into the extent to which climate risks are considered in ESG investment.

This paper contributes to research in sustainable finance and behavioural finance, by identifying the latest climate risk management techniques used among UK-headquartered asset managers and uniquely evaluating these in their capacity to address barriers to low-carbon investment arising from organisational behaviours and processes.

A primary urban destination can be accessed through its regional periphery. Thus, while a city centre may be the primary attraction, by approaching it from and through the periphery, suburbs can become part of the place and marginalised people as part of the destination from a more holistic perspective. Tourists who are more attuned to the various layers of the transformation of a destination may be more attentive visitors and might empathise and engage with the lives and survival of others when given an opportunity to reflect on other elements of the destination beyond the central area. As part of a field trip to Rome, the Chair of Tourism of the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt explored the inequalities at the periphery of Rome as a destination with undergraduate students from the Faculty of Mathematics and Geography. The results show that a holistic impression and deep understanding of a destination can only be gained by visiting both: its centre and its periphery. Moreover, the centre and periphery of a destination can then be compared in terms of, for example, poor or rich, well kept or unkempt, or native or migrant. However, these comparisons should not be used to look at poverty or similar factors, but to develop an awareness of differences and to look behind the typical tourist zones of a destination. In this case, we suggest that tourist routes can be key in providing a more holistic experience in an historic city.

Tourism employment is very diverse ranging from precarious, exploitative study to high-quality workplaces. However, poor employment images dominate the tourism industry, which makes attracting employees difficult. This study aims to examine the processes that lead to such image construction.

Using a qualitative methodology, the study develops a multilevel framing cycle comprising a media analysis of newspapers and magazines (macro-level), a conversation analysis of peer communication/negotiations (meso-level) and a content analysis of single employee/manager interviews (micro-level); and a comparative analysis of the macro-, meso- and micro-level findings.

The multilevel frame cycle identifies image-construction processes that pass through working conditions, payment, seasonality and human resource problems. These processes are shaped by the two cross-level dynamics of radicalization and attenuation. The latter consists of rationalized and repressed framings of tourism employment images (TEI) and the former consists of ideological and emotional framings.

Tourism stakeholders should support and participate in a pragmatic and open dialog to overcome the radicalization and attenuation of tourism employment. The key players require a new deal to end the “information warfare” on tourism employment, inaugurating a new era of collaborative and constructive employment relations.

This study develops a holistic and dynamic understanding of TEI by exploring how media products, peer groups and employees/managers jointly construct these images. It demonstrates how attenuation and radicalization shape poor employment images in tourism. It argues that these dynamics “lock in” the status-quo, create mutual recrimination between employers and employees and counteract common strategies that could otherwise improve employment structures and the image of tourism.

Logistics and supply chain management has been elevated to a strategic level whereby firms can simultaneously achieve differentiation and low cost for sustained competitive advantage. Empirical studies have often concentrated on logistics management in developed Western countries, displaying a bias towards the USA. This study applies the competency approach to explore logistics in Taiwan. A survey of 1,200 manufacturing firms was undertaken in order to examine the relationships between logistics competency, logistics performance, and financial performance, using exploratory factor analysis and the structural equation modelling technique. Four logistics competencies, namely, integration and knowledge competency, customer focused logistics competency, measurement competency, and agility competency were identified. The research findings revealed that (1) logistics competency was significantly related to logistics performance but not significantly associated with financial performance, and (2) logistics performance was positively associated with financial performance. These findings also implied that logistics competency has an indirect effect on financial performance through logistics performance. This finding confirmed the “world-class” logistics competencies (i.e. positioning, integration, agility, and measurement) as identified by MSUGLRT (1995). In addition, it suggests that logistics competency in a huge geographic area such as America can have the same effect in a smaller geographic area such as Taiwan.