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No matter how much effort is placed into producing quality service, the true test lies in the perception of customers. To assess this perception, lodging executives have only a few quantitative instruments available from which to choose, since the development of such scales is still in its infancy. This study takes the reader through the step‐by‐step development of a reliable and valid quantitative measuring tool that lodging practitioners can implement to measure their customers’ perception of delivered quality. The procedures followed begin with the same original dimensions that were used to develop SERVQUAL. The resulting lodging quality index (LQI) emphasizes five clearly defined dimensions of service quality.

The reduction in the US defense budget has resulted in reduced employment at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics – Fort Worth site by more 20,000 employees within the last decade. The company pursued a strategy to increase productivity and quality with the reduced work force while maintaining not only the public trust, but also the trust of its employees. Maintaining employee trust is directly linked to employees’ belief in the security of their employment. While the recently won Joint Strike Fighter contract will cause the need to expand, today’s competitive aerospace environment implies the need to maintain those strategies that resulted in that contract. Due to the requirement for high employee involvement, the company embraced a strategy to develop an environment that fostered a committed and highly motivated workforce. The University of North Texas, Center for Quality and Productivity assisted by completing a quality success factors survey to assess the employees’ perceptions of quality. As the questionnaire was analyzed, it was discovered that the cohesive work force was homogeneous in its strong identification with the quality goals of the company.

The competitive nature of the hotel industry has given the impetus to practitioners and researchers to invest in Customer Retention strategies and research. Although numerous studies have investigated Customer Retention in the hotel industry, there is still uncertainty regarding Customer Retention in emerging markets. This study, therefore, adds to the existing knowledge by exploring Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey of 873 customers of 56 hotels in four regional capitals located in the southern part of Ghana. Findings indicate that service Tangible and Reliability indirectly relates hotel Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market.

Increased competition amongst the hotel industry players has challenged managers not to focus their attention exclusively on ways to attract and satisfy their customers, but to invest in customer retention strategies with the potential to ensure superior performance of their hotels. This study aims to determine strategies to retain customers in hotels in Ghana, an emerging market. A cross-sectional survey was employed to collect data from 677 hotel employees in 56 Ghanaian licensed hotels. Based on SmartPLS, study findings indicate that customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention embedded in the tangibility and reliability dimensions of the lodging quality index are important for customer retention among hotels in Ghana.

A tax based on land value is in many ways ideal, but many economists dismiss it by assuming it could not raise enough revenue. Standard sources of data omit much of the potential tax base, and undervalue what they do measure. The purpose of this paper is to present more comprehensive and accurate measures of land rents and values, and several modes of raising revenues from them besides the conventional property tax.

The paper identifies 16 elements of land's taxable capacity that received authorities either trivialize or omit. These 16 elements come in four groups.

In Group A, Elements 1‐4 correct for the downward bias in standard sources. In Group B, Elements 5‐10 broaden the concepts of land and rent beyond the conventional narrow perception, while Elements 11‐12 estimate rents to be gained by abating other kinds of taxes. In Group C, Elements 13‐14 explain how using the land tax, since it has no excess burden, uncaps feasible tax rates. In Group D, Elements 15‐16 define some moot possibilities that may warrant further exploration.

This paper shows how previous estimates of rent and land values have been narrowly limited to a fraction of the whole, thus giving a false impression that the tax capacity is low. The paper adds 14 elements to the traditional narrow “single tax” base, plus two moot elements advanced for future consideration. Any one of these 16 elements indicates a much higher land tax base than economists commonly recognize today. Taken together they are overwhelming, and cast an entirely new light on this subject.

The study examines organization citizenship behavior (OCB) as a mediating variable between instrumental work values (IWVs) and organizational performance; and group differences between family manager and nonfamily manager for integrated models in family hotels. Data were collected from 189 hotels (n = 921) ranging from budget to three-star family hotels in Ghana using questionnaire administered conveniently. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Work value positively influences OCB and organizational performance of family hotels. OCB mediates the relationship between work values and organizational performance. The study also found significant support for group differences between family and nonfamily firms for IWVs and mediating effect of OCB on the relationship between IWVs and performance.

Image collections of various types are maintained by organisations of all sizes, in all sectors. The term ‘picture library’ is commonly used to refer to a commercial operation that sells access to a large archive of photographic images: well‐known examples are Getty Images and Corbis. Collections that are smaller in size but equivalent in function are to be found in private‐ and public‐sector institutions everywhere. These collections may be further categorised on the basis of:

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Only recently have significant art and architecture Internet resources been made available. As a reference librarian in a fine arts library, I try to keep track of important resources for my patrons. Managing Internet resources is a challenge: Internet sites with images require high‐end computers and connections, and evaluating the quality of Internet resources is often more difficult and time‐consuming than evaluating print sources. Simply identifying potentially valuable resources amid all the flashy insubstantiality on the Internet is enervating.

Searching for appropriate images as part of a work task is a non-trivial problem. Journalists and copywriters need to find images that are not only visually appropriate to accompany the documents they are creating, but are acceptably priced and licensed. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A work-based study methodology and grounded theory are used to collect qualitative data from a variety of creative professionals including journalists.

The authors report the findings of a study to investigate image search, retrieval and use by creative professionals who routinely use images as part of their work in an online environment. The authors describe the commercial constraints that have an impact on the image users’ behaviour that are not reported in other more academic and lab-based studies of image use (Westman, 2009).

The authors show that the commercial image retrieval systems are based on document retrieval systems, and that this is not the most appropriate approach in the journalism domain.

The authors describe the properties of an “information expedition”; the image seeking behaviour exhibited by journalists in an online environment, and contend that it is significantly different to existing image seeking models which represent other user types.