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Homestay is an alternative product to mass tourism where tourists are accommodated with local family allowing the tourist to learn local culture and lifestyle. The changing tourists' preferences influence the phenomenon of this accommodation trend for unique experiences, increasing competition in the market, and the rapid development in communication technology. This paper aims to observe the current state of the homestay situation in Brunei. This research utilized qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews with a total sample of 23 respondents consisting of homestay operators, local community and tourism officers. The findings are that homestay in Brunei experienced issues with licensing and standards due to unending bureaucracy and unclear instructions, an elusive search of successors for long-term sustainability, and issues on participatory management within the community. This paper contributes valuable insights to developing strategies for the sustainability of homestay tourism, particularly for the stakeholders involved, such as homestay operators, policymakers and tourism practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how participants in diverse schools newly implement the Sanford Harmony social and emotional learning (SEL) program and perceive its benefits for students and overall school climate.

The current study employed a convergent parallel mixed-methods design with a sample of five elementary schools in the western USA. Measures included classroom observations, administrator interviews, teacher interviews and focus groups, student focus groups, and a teacher questionnaire.

Findings indicated expected variation in implementation across schools, although all participants reacted favorably to the program and, importantly, would recommend the program to others. Administrators, teachers and students all saw the value of the program, particularly in terms of student relationship building and improved school climate. Implementation challenges experienced by schools were consistent with research on diffusion of innovations.

The present study demonstrates the importance of effective professional development, continued support, collective decision making and intentional integration of the SEL program throughout a school to support robust implementation and ultimately achieve intended outcomes.

Researchers have yet to examine in-depth implementation of the Sanford Harmony program and how best to support scale-up and more intentional implementation in schools. As implementation fidelity is a key component of a program achieving intended outcomes, the findings from the present study contribute to the knowledge base of supporting SEL program implementation.

This article aims to explore the potential of feminist phenomenology as a conceptual framework for advancing women’s entrepreneurship research and the suitability of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to the proposed framework.

The article critically examines the current state of women’s entrepreneurship research regarding the institutional context and highlights the benefits of a shift towards feminist phenomenology.

The prevailing disembodied and gender-neutral portrayal of entrepreneurship has resulted in an equivocal understanding of women’s entrepreneurship and perpetuated a male-biased discourse within research and practice. By adopting a feminist phenomenological approach, this article argues for the importance of considering the ontological dimensions of lived experiences of situatedness, intersubjectivity, intentionality and temporality in analysing women entrepreneurs’ agency within gendered institutional contexts. It also demonstrates that feminist phenomenology could broaden the current scope of IPA regarding the embodied dimension of language.

The adoption of feminist phenomenology and IPA presents new avenues for research that go beyond the traditional cognitive approach in entrepreneurship, contributing to theory and practice. The proposed conceptual framework also has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research, such as a phenomenological intersectional approach and arts-based methods.

The article contributes to a new research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship research by offering a feminist phenomenological framework that focuses on the embodied dimension of entrepreneurship through the integration of IPA and conceptual metaphor theory (CMT).

Backpackers can be found all over the world, especially in urban areas where the main enclaves are established. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the operationalisation of the term “backpacker” and present a proposal to conceptualise backpackers and backpackers’ segments based on the operational criteria available in literature to avoid incongruities among researchers.

Based on a literature review, this study provides a critical review of the backpacker conceptualisation and operationalisation using a methodology divided into three phases, a quantitative analysis based on the Scopus database and a bibliometric analysis coupled with a manual analysis of documents (content analysis).

Substantial heterogeneity and complexity regarding the conceptualisation of backpacker tourism and its diversified subsegments were evident. For this reason, this paper argues that backpacker tourism can and should continue to be analysed from different perspectives, suitably framed in the theoretical instrument constructed to identify and distinguish the different subsegments through its operationalisation features.

This study provides a practical contribution to all researchers interested in the topic of backpackers proposing the operationalisation of the term backpacker and it subsegments to avoid disparate results and deviations. This contribution will enable the correct and objective assessment of the operationalisation of this concept for researchers, managers and destination management organisations, identifying exactly what phenomenon is to be studied.

Organizations, would they be individual companies or large multi-firm networks, face a wide variety of potential risks requiring dedicated keen management. It all the better applies to supply-chains as risk, related to both physical and information flows, pervades the whole logistics network and has acquired a new and growing security dimension since 9/11. More specifically, as they are now under the permanent threat of terrorism, and because offering sufficient security levels is bound to become a necessary condition for global supply-chain membership, seaports need to adjust their risk management strategy and processes accordingly. In such a context, this paper aims at describing the project of a decision-support system, dedicated to container transit security-wise decision making and which features an expert-system architecture.

As intermodal logistics networks play a crucial role in enhancing the entire logistics performance, effectively managing the intermodal logistics network has become a significant strategic consideration in international logistics. The existing literature stresses that inter-organizational knowledge exchange is essential to successfully integrating logistics components and for maximizing logistics performance in the long run. These contentions ensure that knowledge exchange between intermodal logistics network entities-such as shipping lines, port terminal operators, freight forwarders, road and rail freight operators and other related logistics operators-are key factors in facilitating the successful integration of an intermodal logistics network because an intermodal logistics network is an integrated part of the entire international logistics system. This paper aims to investigate the question of how intermodal logistics network entities can successfully exchange knowledge with each other, and whether the knowledge exchange can contribute to the effective integration of the intermodal logistics network. For this, this paper adopts the social network embeddedness perspective in order to identify a useful inter-organizational relationship mechanism within the intermodal logistics networks, allowing the facilitation of knowledge exchange among the network players. A conceptual framework will be developed for the exploration of the aforementioned relationships between the social network mechanisms, i.e. network density, tie strength, knowledge exchange among network entities, and intermodal logistics network integration. Following the parameters of this framework, the theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.

Inspired by new findings on and perceptions of risk governance, such as the necessity of taking a broader perspective in coping with risks in companies and working together in interactive groups with various stakeholders to deal with complex risks in the modern world, the purpose of this paper is looking for new ways to deal with financial risks. Current methods dealing with those risks are confronted with the problems of being primarily based on past data and experience, neglecting the need for objectivity, focusing on the short-term future and disregarding the interconnectedness of different financial risk categories.

A literature review of risk governance, financial risk management and open foresight was executed to conceptualize solutions to the mentioned-above problems.

Collaborative financial risk assessment (CFRA) is a promising approach in financial risk governance with respect to overcoming said problems. It is a method of risk identification and assessment, which combines aspects of “open foresight” and the financial risk management and governance literature. CFRA is characterized as bringing together members of different companies in trying to detect weak signals and trends to gain knowledge about the future, which helps companies to reduce financial risks and increase the chance of gaining economic value. By overcoming organizational boundaries, individual companies may gain the knowledge they would probably not have without CFRA and achieve a competitive advantage.

A conceptual paper like the one at hand wants empirical proof. Therefore, the authors developed a research agenda in the form of five propositions for further research.

This paper discusses the existing problems of financial risk identification and assessment methods. It contributes to the existing literature by proposing CFRA as a solution to those problems and adding a new perspective to financial risk governance.

Boards presently are considered the most critical component in improving corporate governance (CG). Board diversity is increasingly being recommended as a tool for enhancing firm performance. Academic research and regulatory action regarding board diversity are focussed mainly on gender and ethnic composition of boards. However, the perspective of board members on board diversity and its impact is mostly missing. Moreover, while strategic leadership perspective suggests that a broader set of upper echelon’s characteristics may shape their actions, empirical evidence investigating the impact of less-explored attributes of diversity is almost non-existent. While the research on the input–output relationship between board diversity and firm performance remains equivocal, an intervening relationship between board diversity and board effectiveness needs to be understood. The purpose of this paper is to address all three limitations and explore the subject from board members’ perspective.

The paper presents the findings of qualitative, exploratory research conducted by interviewing 42 board members of FTSE 350 companies. The data are analysed thematically.

The findings of the research suggest that board members of FTSE 350 companies consider the diversity of functional experience to be a critical requirement for boards’ role-effectiveness. Functionally diverse boards manage external dependencies more effectively and challenge assumptions of the executive more efficiently, thus improving CG. The findings significantly contribute to the literature on board diversity, as well as to strategic leadership theory and other applicable theories. The research is conducted with a relatively small but elite and difficult to approach set of 42 board members of FTSE 350 companies.

The paper makes a unique and significant contribution to praxis by presenting the perspective of practitioners of CG – board members. The findings may encourage board nomination committees to seek board diversity beyond the gender and ethnic characteristics of directors. The findings may also be relevant for policy formulation, as they indicate that functionally diverse boards have improved effectiveness in a range of board roles.

Board diversity is about building a board that accurately reflects the make-up of the population and stakeholders of the society where the company operates. The aim of board diversity is to cultivate a broad range of attributes and perspectives that reflects real-world demographics as boards need to continue to earn their “licence to operate in society” as organisations have a responsibility to multiple constituents and stakeholders, including the community and the wider society within which they exist. Building social capital through diversity has value in the wider context of modern society and achieving social justice.

The paper makes an original and unique contribution to strategic leadership theory by strengthening the argument of the theory. The paper explores beyond widely researched attributes of gender and ethnicity on boards and explores the impact of a less-researched characteristic of directors – their functional experience. Moreover, the paper opens the “black box” of CG – boards, and presents the perspectives of board members. The findings indicate that board members in FTSE 350 boards define diversity more broadly than academics and regulatory agencies often do.

This study aims to develop a competitive dynamics model of container shipping liners, one which examines how inter-firm network embeddedness would affect inter-firm rivalry such as the likelihood of a competitive action of a focal firm and the likelihood of its rivals’ response and how the inter-firm rivalry then has an influence on the market share of the focal firm. Structural and relational network embeddedness between a focal firm and its competitors would be investigated as drivers of the likelihood of the competitive action and response. The theoretical framework on the relationship between network embeddedness, inter-firm rivalry and market share in the liner shipping industry will be developed and relevant propositions are then suggested in relation to the model. This attempt may provide meaningful insights for managers and academic researchers into the key factors which affect the inter-firm rivalry between shipping liners and may also detail the impact of inter-firm rivalry on the focal firm’s market share. This research would therefore contribute to the development of the competitive strategy of container shipping companies so as to help them strategically manage their rivals’ competitive behaviors and maximize their market share.

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.