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This research aims to model the existing system of destination competitiveness, identifies leverage points and develop revised model to achieve sustainable competitiveness.

System dynamics is used as method of modeling destination competitiveness. Structure of model utilizes 9-factor model as reference. Leverage points are identified using system archetypes. Revised model is built with resource-based view (RBV). Case study was conducted in Samosir, Toba Lake. Data used are secondary data and results of in-depth interviews.

There are 3 sub-systemic characteristics (archetypes) that hinder competitiveness. They are limit to growth quality gap, fix that fails infrastructure and promotion, tragedy of common lake pollution. Destination was unable to meet tourist expectations. Tourists spending decreased, demand size was small. Industries are unable to increase capabilities. Professionals, entrepreneurs, local workers, supporting industries are less interested in entering industry. Government policies do not match with destination's needs. Lake as main attraction is getting polluted. To achieve sustainable competitiveness, destination must utilize their valuable, rare and inimitable (VRI) resources and capabilities to design unique experiences for tourists, hence sustainable.

Government policy should be shifted to prioritizing development of valuable, rare, inimitable and well-organized resources and capabilities of destination, to produce unique tourist experience and achieve sustainable competitiveness.

Methods and findings, combining system dynamics, system archetype, 9-factor model and RBV to achieve sustainable competitiveness is novel and can enrich tourism sustainable competitiveness theory/concept.

The aim of this study is to shed light on the talent management practices in the unique context of seasonal work in professional kitchens. Acknowledging that in the context of seasonal work in the hospitality industry it is rather difficult to rely on mainstream strategic talent management practices (e.g. training and development), the authors draw on resource orchestration, an extension of the resource-based view and propose a conceptual model of talent management tactics that could potentially increase seasonal employees’ likelihood of returning to the same employer.

Given the uniqueness of the context of this study and the dearth of prior relevant research, this study uses a grounded theory approach. Specifically, this study analyses and draws conclusions from 25 interviews with employees in commercial kitchens.

This study develops a “talent orchestration model”, which places emphasis on management of talented employees across three dimensions: structuring, leveraging and developing talent.

Extant literature in human capital management focusses mostly on the development of human capital, but the results place more emphasis on using or leveraging human capital.

This study moves beyond the well-researched context of hotels and focusses on talent management behind closed doors as in the case of kitchen chefs and, drawing on resource orchestration, this study further examines talent management practices with shorter time frame targeted on seasonal employees.

The purpose of this study was to examine the global perceptions of social equity in the fine dining business model as a result of the surprise announcement for the 2024 planned closure of the Michelin three-star restaurant, Noma.

This study used critical discourse analysis to inductively analyze 91 source documents retrieved through a lexical database search. The analysis yielded five overarching themes and six subthemes.

Findings from this study serve as a benchmark in retrospect for capturing a rapidly accelerating global conversation from January to March 2023 around the long-term viability and social sustainability of the fine dining business model.

Against the backdrop of labor challenges in the restaurant industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, the announced closure of Noma precipitated criticism of the stage (unpaid intern) system and the intense pressures of attaining and maintaining Michelin star status.

Results from the discourse analysis suggest certification for fine dining restaurants, perhaps through the Michelin Guide, for demonstrating a commitment to social sustainability as a qualifier to achieve a Michelin star.

Findings from this research reveal a palpable change in societal tolerance for a more socially sustainable fine dining restaurant business model that advances equitable solutions for its workers while assuring the economic sustainability of restaurants.

This study drew upon a foodscape lens to reveal a juxtaposition between well-executed environmentally sustainable initiatives in the fine dining business model and the threats to the social sustainability among its workers.

Escalation of commitment is one of the most influential decision-making biases in entrepreneurs which may incur substantial losses and result in failure by making entrepreneurs allocate an increasing amount of resources to failing plans. Not only is escalation one of the less-researched biases in entrepreneurship but also most of the existing studies have been either limited to specific contexts or exclusively limited to men entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of escalation of commitment among a sample of Iranian women and men entrepreneurs to address these gaps.

By conducting a narrative inquiry, data were collected through semi-structured and in-depth interviews with nine women and 10 men Iranian entrepreneurs who were founder/owners of a small business and had introduced at least one product to the market.

According to the findings of this study, the fear of losing autonomy and fear of being blamed by one’s family were the main drivers of escalation of commitment among the women entrepreneurs, while overconfidence, sense of responsibility and hoping to gain more profits were the main antecedents of escalation among men entrepreneurs.

This study is a pioneer in studying the antecedents of the escalation of commitment among women and men entrepreneurs comparatively in the context of a developing country.

Decision-making is of utmost importance for entrepreneurs. One of the most important entrepreneurial decisions is the decision to persist, which under certain circumstances such as a high level of adversity may seal the fate of entrepreneurs’ businesses. Nevertheless, the main antecedents of the decision to persist among entrepreneurs have remained understudied. This dearth of research is more obvious with respect to women entrepreneurs, especially in developing countries. To address this gap, this paper aims to explore the main antecedents of the decision to persist among women entrepreneurs.

By adopting a narrative approach, data were collected through a combination of semi-structured and in-depth questions with a sample of Iranian women entrepreneurs founding and running small businesses offering services in a variety of sectors and analysed by narrative data analysis.

According to the findings, the pandemic-emanated uncertainty, personal attachment to one’s venture as well as the reluctance of being blamed by one’s family, and the fear of the unknown future were the main drivers of the decision to persist among the entrepreneurs.

This paper offers two novel contributions to the extant literature. This paper is a pioneer not only in exploring entrepreneurs’ decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic but also in studying the decision to persist in the context of the developing nations.

To effectively meet their social objectives, humanitarian organizations need to be more innovative and find novel ways to stay competitive. Yet there has been limited focus on innovation by humanitarian organizations. Part of the issue is the lack of new practices and novel approaches that can be used as benchmarks. This study focuses on food banks, a critical hub for the delivery of food in humanitarian supply chains and where the use of innovation seems to be more reported on.

Focusing on resource scarcity, a commonly referenced constraint by humanitarian organizations, the authors study how food and fund scarcity (versus abundance) influence the innovation efforts of twelve food banks in the United States. This study observes variations in behavior before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The authors find that food banks operating in high resource scarcity (food-scarce and fund-scarce) settings focus on process innovations. Food banks operating in low resource scarcity (food-abundant and fund-abundant) settings focus on product innovations. Food banks operating in food-abundant and fund-scarce settings focus on marketing innovations. Food banks operating in food-scarce and fund-abundant settings show the most extensive focus on innovation by relying on imitative innovations. The innovation focus for most food banks switches to process innovation during the COVID pandemic.

The study breaks down resource scarcity specific to food banks by differentiating food and funds, a novel approach to studying scarcity. Findings are novel as they suggest that operating context has a highly differentiating effect on what food banks focus on in terms of innovation. Operating context can lead to focus on process, product, imitative of market-related innovations. Finally, the study is novel because it explores how change in the environmental context due to disruptions can drastically modify the innovation focus of food banks.

The purpose of this paper was to study responses to traditional food of a country, focusing on emotion-motivational responses by locals and foreigners.

Through an experimental design study, Portuguese and Foreign participants were exposed to both traditional and nontraditional food pictures of a country and asked to evaluate their emotional and motivational responses while physiological responses of electrodermal activity were being continuously recorded. Predisposition factors of body dissatisfaction, food neophobia and food involvement were also evaluated given their potential role in predicting the responses to the visualization of the food pictures.

This study found that local traditional food received a higher positive evaluation than nontraditional food with locals evaluating it even higher than foreigners. Higher feelings of arousal and desire as well as willingness to try in response to traditional food were also found as well as higher feelings of pleasure by locals. However, interestingly, and contrary to expectations derived from previous literature, emotion-motivational responses were not significantly different between locals and foreigners.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research addressed an identified research gap in the literature, being the first one evaluating the autonomic responses of consumers to traditional food by exploring how local and foreign consumers respond to traditional food versus nontraditional food using psychophysiological measures of emotion.

El objetivo principal de esta investigación fue estudiar las respuestas a la comida tradicional de un país, centrándose en las respuestas emoción-motivación de los locales y los extranjeros.

A través de un estudio de diseño experimental, los participantes portugueses y extranjeros fueron expuestos a imágenes de comida tradicional y no tradicional de un país y se les pidió que evaluaran sus respuestas emocionales y motivacionales mientras se registraban continuamente las respuestas fisiológicas de la actividad electrodérmica. También se evaluaron los factores de predisposición de la insatisfacción corporal, la neofobia a la comida y la implicación en la comida, dado su papel potencial en la predicción de las respuestas a la visualización de las imágenes de comida.

Encontramos que la comida tradicional local recibió una evaluación positiva más alta que la comida no tradicional, con los locales evaluándola incluso más alto que los extranjeros. También se encontraron mayores sentimientos de excitación y deseo, así como la voluntad de probar en respuesta a la comida tradicional, así como mayores sentimientos de placer por parte de los locales. Sin embargo, curiosamente, y en contra de las expectativas derivadas de la literatura anterior, las respuestas emocionales-motivacionales no fueron significativamente diferentes entre los locales y los extranjeros.

Esta investigación abordó una brecha de investigación identificada en la literatura, siendo la primera que evalúa las respuestas autonómicas de los consumidores a la comida tradicional al explorar cómo los consumidores locales y extranjeros responden a la comida tradicional frente a la no tradicional utilizando medidas psicofisiológicas de emoción.

本研究的主要目的是研究本地人和外国人对一个国家的传统食物的情感动机反应。

通过实验设计研究, 葡萄牙人和外国参与者会看到一个国家的传统和非传统食物图片, 并被要求评估他们的情绪和动机反应, 同时连续记录皮肤电活动的生理反应。考虑到其他变量在预测对食物图片可视化的反应方面的潜在作用, 还评估了身体不满、食物恐惧症和食物参与的易感因素的影响。

研究结果发现, 当地的传统食物比非传统食物得到了更高的积极评价, 且当地人对它的评价甚至比外国人更高。当地人对传统食物的表现出更高的唤醒, 欲望和尝试意愿, 以及更高的愉悦感。然而, 有趣的是, 与以往文献的预期相反, 当地人和外国人之间的情绪动机反应并没有呈现出明显差异。

这项研究填补了现有文献中的研究空白, 它是第一个通过使用心理生理学的情绪测量方法来探索本地和外国消费者对传统食物与非传统食物的反应, 从而评估消费者对传统食物自主反应的研究。

To better understand the emergence of small-scale entrepreneurial firms in the under-researched transition economy of Cuba.

Given the scarcity of reliable publicly available information and restrictions on private data collection in Cuba, in-depth interviews were conducted with a panel of small-scale entrepreneurs at three different points in time. Evolutions are analyzed over this period.

Family can overcome institutional constraints by helping the entrepreneur deal with market and social obstacles. Despite the absence of a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem, these new entrepreneurs and their families have been able to transform longstanding passive attitudes into positive steps to set up new small-scale ventures in a country facing unprecedented internal and external challenges.

A new conceptual model of family support for entrepreneurship in transition economies is presented. The findings lend weight to institutional theory on overcoming constraints in emerging markets and extend the theory of family entrepreneurship to new transition economies.

Using the lens of crisis innovation and strategic alignment, this study explores how a segment of the restaurant sector that may be less agile than others—Michelin-starred restaurants—perceives and aligns with the challenges brought about by the COVID-19-pandemic.

The study collected data from 19 Michelin-starred restaurants in Spain using a qualitative interview method. The data were analyzed qualitatively and organized thematically.

Four key categories of strategic challenges were identified: human resources, uncertainty, control and economic challenges. In response, chefs displayed both behavioral and organizational strategies. Those organizational strategies were new human resource management, reorganization, product and service innovation and marketing. While the new human resource management actions adopted to align with the human resource challenges identified, a misalignment remains between some of the other strategic actions, such as product and service innovation, marketing and economic and uncertainty challenges.

The findings offer new insight into Michelin-starred restaurant chefs' challenges and (mis)alignment strategies, an area that has been understudied in the current literature on innovative responses in the hospitality sector post-pandemic.

This study aims, first, to understand consumers’ perception of chefs as human brands (i.e. study one). Second, tests were run to assess the validity of a new conceptual model of the relationships between the factors of chef image, luxury restaurant image, both images’ congruity and consumers’ hedonic and novelty experiences and happiness and well-being (i.e. study two).

The first qualitative study involved using Leximancer software to analyse the data drawn from 43 interviews with luxury restaurant clients. In the second quantitative study, 993 valid survey questionnaires were collected, and the proposed model was tested using structural equation modelling.

The results reveal that consumers perceive chefs as human brands and the associated narratives include both performance- and popularity-based characteristics. The findings support the conclusion that individuals give great importance to chefs’ image and the congruence between chefs and their restaurant’s image. In addition, luxury restaurant image only affects novelty experiences, and both hedonic and novelty experiences have a positive effect on customers’ happiness and well-being.

This research focused on Portuguese luxury restaurants. The consumers’ happiness and well-being needs to be replaced by other outcomes to confirm if the model produces consistent results.

The results should help luxury restaurant managers understand more fully which pull factors are valued by their clients and which aspects contribute the most to their pleasure and welfare.

This study adds to the extant literature by exploring consumers’ perceptions of chefs as human brands and the role these chefs’ image play in customers’ luxury restaurant experiences and perceived happiness and well-being.