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Given the increasingly competitive nature of the international hotel industry, understanding sources of competitive advantage is likely to become a critical management task in the 1990s. A framework for practising managers is presented within which to examine the link between the hotel′s resources and sustained competitive advantage, using anecdotal evidence from the international hotel industry. Three indicators that have the potential to generate durable advantages ‐ value, irreversibility, and inimitability – are discussed. The framework is applied to one major set of resources: organisational capability.

The events which unfolded during the period of the financial crisis can be seen as a counterexample to the world depicted by adherents of the rational expectations paradigm, presenting as much a challenge for modern macroeconomics as it has for the more traditional economic models. For instance, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) had been widely acclaimed by the UK government and the public for their corporate strategy, yet in February 2009 RBS reported a pre-tax loss of £24 billion, the largest in UK corporate history. For another example, executives operating in the banking system often imitate the investment strategies of good performers, which can lead to under-performing investors lending to high-risk borrowers, resulting in ‘herding behaviour’ and frequent runs on the bank (Shiller, 1995), a situation exacerbated by the activities of fund managers and the forecasts of financial analysts which serves only to accelerate speculative bubbles (Froot, Scharfstein, & Stein, 1992). A financial crisis is inevitable. A further example is provided by Lehman Bros who filed for bankruptcy in October 2008 after the value of money market funds fell considerably over a very short period, revealing knowledge about the riskiness of trades in which market operators were trading high-risk securities believing they were low risk. It should also not be possible in a rational expectations world for banks to market subprime mortgage-related securities knowing they have a high likelihood of default to buyers that have not factored this risk into their expectations.

The paper examines the conditional capital asset pricing model (CCAPM) of Jagannathan and Wang using the UK data and develops a data-driven measure of beta instability risk that is pertinent to the UK stock market. In contrast to the view that the main part of the Jagannathan and Wang's model is the inclusion of human capital, however, the paper finds that human capital remains insignificant in most tests.

Data were taken from the London Share Price Database and Datastream. This paper therefore examines the premium labour (PL) model of Jagannathan and Wang using the UK data, while the paper attaches particular importance to the measure of beta instability as a source of time variation in betas. In analysing the measure of beta instability risk, this study considers a testable measure of instability risk that varies across markets and across time as the interaction between the stock market and the economy varies across different time periods. Hence, this paper develops a data-driven measure of beta instability risk that is pertinent to the UK stock market.

The results confirm the premium version of the model, that is, the CCAPM without a proxy for human capital. In particular, the paper finds that over the entire time period of this study, the measure for beta instability risk and market portfolio has significant explanatory power for the variations of returns. More specifically, when using the average earnings index as a proxy for human capital in the PL model, the premium model performs better than the PL model. When total income from employment is used as a proxy for human capital, the performance of the PL model improves for the full period. However, the results for the two sub-periods are less favourable for the PL model as, again, labour income is not priced for these periods. These results indicate that the PL model is sensitive to proxies used for human capital.

The results revive the importance of beta instability risk in CCAPM of Jagannathan and Wang's model and suggest that the beta instability drives this model.

The resource‐based view (RBV) and the dynamic‐capabilities approach (DCA) have emerged as two important frameworks in strategic management that seek to explain why firms are different. In recent years operations management scholars have sought to integrate both RBV and DCA within the field's epistemological orientation to provide normative frameworks for practising managers. This paper argues that the structure of resources and capabilities are such that they present impediments to normative prescriptions. Using ideas from complex systems it argues that any framework for thinking about resource accumulation and capability development must take account of uncertainty and knowledge imperfections in the system. The paper contends that the real options framework is an appropriate heuristic for managing the process of capability development and a case study of a manufacturing operation is used to illustrate our ideas.

Since Thomas Kuhn (1962), a historian of science who gave ‘paradigm’ its contemporary meaning, the term ‘paradigm’ has been widely used in science and social sciences to refer to a theoretical framework or thought pattern in any given discipline, or broadly, a set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect individual perceptions of a reality and their subsequent reactions. A dominant paradigm is the widely held system of thought in a society at a particular period of time. For Kuhn, a dominant paradigm can be changed and replaced by a new one, which often occurs in a revolutionary manner in science. In social sciences, ‘paradigm shift’ implies the changing ways of understanding and organising a social reality.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue by positioning and examining some of the key issues, tensions and challenges in graduate entrepreneurship in the developing world.

The paper recognises the complexity and diversity of approaches considered by the different authors, highlighting a range of issues and challenges in their contributions. The paper is divided into the following sections: entrepreneurial intentions, attitudes and motivations; the role of higher education; and contextual cases, opportunities and challenges in graduate entrepreneurship.

The paper suggests that there is a lack of research in the field of graduate entrepreneurship in the developing world, and that further research in developing countries may help to understand and shed light on the issues evolving around graduate entrepreneurial intentions, business start‐up and education. Some preliminary themes emerge from research included in this special issue. First, entrepreneurial intentions seem to be higher in developing countries when compared with developed ones. Second, economic and institutional frameworks tend to be unfavourable to entrepreneurial activity. As in developed countries, entrepreneurship seems to be experiencing an upsurge. This could be a tremendously powerful force to accelerate economic growth and development. In this sense, higher education in general, and entrepreneurship education in particular, may be key instruments to help promote entrepreneurial activity.

The paper provides an insight into entrepreneurial intentions and related education and training in developing countries. This should be of interest to researchers, policy‐makers, and higher education institutions.

Using risk-related data often require a significant amount of upfront work to collect, extract and transform data. In addition, the lack of a consistent data structure hinders the development of tools that can be used with more than one set of data. The purpose of this paper is to report on an effort to solve these problems through the development of extensible, internally consistent schemas for risk-related data.

The consortia coordinated their efforts so the hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas are compatible. Hazard data can be provided as either event footprints or stochastic catalogs. Exposure classes include buildings, infrastructure, agriculture, livestock, forestry and socio-economic data. The vulnerability component includes fragility and vulnerability functions and indicators for physical and social vulnerability. The schemas also provide the ability to define uncertainties and allow the scoring of vulnerability data for relevance and quality.

As a proof of concept, the schemas were populated with data for Tanzania and with exposure data for several other countries.

The data schema and data exploration tool are open source and, if widely accepted, could become widely used by practitioners.

A single set of hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas will not fit all purposes. Tools will be needed to transform the data into other formats.

This paper describes extensible, internally consistent, multi-hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas that can be used to store disaster risk-related data and a data exploration tool that promotes data discovery and use.

IT is with peculiar pleasure that I find myself once more engaged in University Extension work under the presidency of Lord Goschen. Until your well‐remembered tenure of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer drew you from active service with us, my lord, you presided for many years over the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, and therefore, over myself as a humble member of the Council. I trust you have as pleasant memories of us, as obedient and diligent workers, as we have of you as an energetic and enthusiastic chairman. Many changes have come since then. The London Society is a thing of the past, absorbed into my own University, which itself has changed almost beyond recognition. One of the members in your time is now a Bishop, another rules South Africa, you, yourself, no longer sway the House of Commons. If we still existed and had now to hold a sub‐committee in the chamber of our colleague Milner, we should have to travel many hundreds of miles instead of walking round to Duke Street, St. James's, as you will remember we did in those old days.