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ON another page will be found preliminary notes with regard to the Annual Conference of the Library Association at Liverpool. We have before us at the time of writing only an outline of the programme, but we hope to foreshadow in the May Number further features of the June Meeting, and to publish articles on the Literary Associations and Libraries of Liverpool.

Despite their popularity among tourists, information about low-cost accommodation is limited. The study aims to focus on hostels as tourist accommodation. The purpose of this paper is to document the perceptions of hostel front-desk employees about customers and examine employees’ perceptions from a cultural perspective. As culture moderates behavior in general, in light of the cultural difference postulate which proposes that guests and hosts who are from similar or proximate cultures are more likely to experience positive service encounter and that encounter between guests and hosts from distant cultures may be more challenging to service providers, the study compares the perceptions of hostel Western front-desk employees with those of Eastern front-desk employees of their customers. Customers are categorized into four groups – Western customers, Eastern, Middle Eastern/Arab and African. Exploratory interviews paved the development of perception items, which were later on used in a questionnaire to serve the study’s purpose. The paper has managerial and theoretical implications and offers suggestions for further research to advance understanding about this neglected tourism environment.

Preliminary/exploratory short interviews with hostel employees in London paved the development of perception items, which were later on used in a questionnaire. There are about 190 hostels in the London area. The questionnaire was self-administered and successfully completed by 113 front-desk employees working in London hostels. t-test statistics was used to examine whether the two groups of employees hold different perceptions about their culturally different group of customers.

Results indicate that, generally, differences in perception exist among hostel employees about their customer groups. For example, Western customers are perceived as nicer and more tip-givers than Eastern customers, but they also complain more and are more demanding than their counterparts. Asian customers are perceived to be friendlier, least troublesome and least demanding than the other customer groups. African customers are the least positively perceived. As for Middle Eastern (Arab) customers, they are perceived rather somewhat positively and yet the least favorite. Furthermore, no statistical differences were observed between Western employees and Eastern employees’ perceptions about their customer groups, except that the latter perceives Asian customers to be more troublesome and more complaining.

Although researchers have compared Western people’s behaviors and attitudes with those of Eastern people, differences may also exist within cultural groups, especially between East Europeans and West Europeans, between Middle Eastern and North Africans or between Americans and Canadians, despite cultural proximity. Therefore, it is always reasonable to interpret cultural differences studies cautiously.

Hostel management is advised not to take cultural proximity/distance between employees and customers for granted and, thus, should not assume that Eastern employees are more likely to provide better service to Eastern customers than Western employees or that Western employees are more likely to do so to Western customers because they are culturally similar or proximate. In an increasingly globalized world and mobile and culturally diverse workforce in the hospitality sector, it becomes necessary to raise employees’ awareness about cultural differences and their probable effects on perceptions. This is especially true for hostels because of their social characteristic.

Despite the importance of hostels to the tourism and hospitality industry, not much is known about their customers or their employees. In addition to contributing to employee perception in general, which is also a neglected area of study, this paper used cultural distance/proximity to assess differences in perception between Eastern employees and Western employees about four culturally different groups of hostel customers. In light of the impacts of globalization on consumer behavior, this paper joins other research to challenge the cultural distance postulate in the service encounter context.

The historian can provide quite a different explanation, other than the currently held views, for the emergence of the Red Terror in 1918.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the idea of the “knowledge front” alongside ideas of “home” and “war” front as a way of understanding the expertise of university-educated women in an examination of the First World War and its aftermath. The paper explores the professional lives of two women, the medical researcher, Elsie Dalyell, and the teacher, feminist and unionist, Lucy Woodcock. The paper examines their professional lives and acquisition and use of university expertise both on the war and home fronts, and shows how women’s intellectual and scientific activity established during the war continued long after as a way to repair what many believed to be a society damaged by war. It argues that the idea of “knowledge front” reveals a continuity of intellectual and scientific activity from war to peace, and offers “space” to examine the professional lives of university-educated women in this period.

The paper is structured as an analytical narrative interweaving the professional lives of two women, medical researcher Elsie Dalyell and teacher/unionist Lucy Woodcock to illuminate the contributions of university-educated women’s expertise from 1914 to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The emergence of university-educated women in the First World War and the interwar years participated in the civic structure of Australian society in innovative and important ways that challenged the “soldier citizen” ethos of this era. The paper offers a way to examine university-educated women’s professional lives as they unfolded during the course of war and peace that focuses on what they did with their expertise. Thus, the “knowledge front” provides more ways to examine these lives than the more narrowly articulated ideas of “home” and “war” front.

The idea of the “knowledge front” applied to women in this paper also has implications for how to analyse the meaning of the First World War-focused university expertise more generally both during war and peace.

The usual view of women’s participation in war is as nurses in field hospitals. This paper broadens the notion of war to see war as having many interconnected fronts including the battle front and home front (Beaumont, 2013). By doing so, not only can we see a much larger involvement of women in the war, but we also see the involvement of university-educated women.

The paper shows that while the guns may have ceased on 11 November 1918, women’s lives continued as they grappled with their war experience and aimed to reassert their professional lives in Australian society in the 1920s and 1930s.

The paper contains original biographical research of the lives of two women. It also conceptualises the idea of “knowledge front” in terms of war/home front to examine how the expertise of university-educated career women contributed to the social fabric of a nation recovering from war.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the educative experiences of Arthur Wesley Wheen – his socialisation and indoctrination within a devout family, on the one hand, and his elite classical schooling on the other hand. Such influences laid the seeds of internal conflict and were compounded at Teachers College, the Arts Faculty of the University of Sydney and at New College Oxford. It is argued that profound educative influences and the trauma of First World War shaped and redefined his life, work and personality as a scholar, cultural critic and translator. The impact of the curriculum and ethos of elite schooling on life interests is a major theme. Attempts will be made to discover from the vast mosaic of classical learning what eventually became inscribed on Wheen’s psyche.

In this paper the author uses a critical biographical and life-study approach in the broad parameters of historical research by a close examination of primary and secondary sources including a rich vein of correspondence and related unpublished writings; school, teachers college and university records, battalion and personal war records and published literature, frequently contemporary in nature. In design subtle iconographic and psychoanalytic nuances will be drawn from the raw material of history.

This research is intended to demonstrate how the traumatic requirements of a frontline soldier affected a profound disillusionment with imperial institutions. The study attempts to show how Wheen lost his religious convictions in the heat of total war and later became a passionate expatriate pacifist, social theorist and scholar. It is intended to reveal the complex layers of personal conviction. The author glances at the literary impact of AW Wheen’s translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and the Hollywood film version in terms of his contribution that has not been well recognised.

The paper demonstrates how educative experiences led to significant literary outcomes and how elite classical educative forces shaped style and scholarly endeavour. It draws from history, theology, education and cultural studies and synthesises them.

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate thought on the management of business alliances by considering the mismanagement of relationships between the allies, particularly France and Great Britain, in World War I.

The paper is not intended to be a work of history, although such works are used extensively, but, given the limitations of such a paper, an exhaustive analysis of the events in World War I is infeasible. Errors in selection of data are the responsibility of the paper's author.

The war did not develop as expected and the physical stalemate on the Western Front proved intractable to the routine thinking of the generals. The war involved the total economy of the nations involved in a way never before encountered and the steps the politicians had to take to gear up their nations brought them into conflict with the military. Although the nations opposing the Central Powers were allied, there was no single strategy, rather a series of national initiatives that were barely co‐ordinated with their partners. Unity of military command was achieved in the final months of the war and led to a greater effectiveness of the Entente armies. Firms that ally themselves need to overcome this tendency to concentrate on their own operations and be prepared to appoint an “alliance manager” with the power to make the partners work effectively as a team. The absence of clear thinking in strategy formulation and effective joint command in 1914‐1918 resulted in a Pyrrhic victory and terrible casualties and vast expenditure. Firms cannot afford such a “victory”.

The case is a warning to those forming business alliances that their aims must be harmonised with those of their partners, that the strategy is for the benefit of all partners, and some “sovereignty” must be sacrificed in the wider interests o the alliance.

This approach aims to cast an unusual perspective on alliances from which the value of existing theory is reinforced.

The purpose of this article is to expand the discussion pertaining to Vimy beyond traditional historic and military circles and to illustrate that the site is a significant tourism attraction featuring evolving management and interpretation approaches. This is achieved by describing the commemoration of First World War sites and the evolution and transformation of visitor typologies at these sites. The conversation is framed within a discussion of the role of heritage dissonance in management. Since this article was written at the onset of the centennial of the Great War, an examination of the management of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, which includes a tourism perspective, is timely.

Consisting of participation observations and a review of literature, documentation, government reports and Web sites describing the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, this analysis is complemented by site visits and discussions with key personnel involved in the management of the site.

Because this article precedes the upcoming centennial of the Great War, an examination of the management of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, which includes a tourism perspective, is timely. The discussion and conclusion sections provide a suggestion of how dissonant heritage can be addressed, and present an argument for the inclusion of new technologies in the management and interpretation of First World War memorials and the celebrations associated with the centennial of 2014-2019 in order to embrace new visitor types.

This is a conceptual paper examining past and current management strategies of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. No participants or manager was interviewed or surveyed.

Strategies to improve future management through the engagement of tourism researchers, new technologies and by addressing dissonant heritage are provided through literature review and on-site visits.

Currently, the management of the Vimy Memorial caters largely to a certain segment of Canadian population. The findings suggest that by addressing other components of Canadian society and even other combatants, the management and interpretation of the site could be greatly diversified and could eventually become a battlefield like Gettysburg or Gallipoli, where all combatants are recognized and honored.

This is the first paper examining the management of the Vimy Memorial from a tourism perspective.

To apply the theories of project management to the transformation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from the colonial‐style army of 1914 into the victorious continental‐style armies of 1918.

The methodological approach examines ten elements in the transformation. They range from the resources required to the necessary governmental changes. Emphasis is given to analysing the application of the new technologies, the political and social changes needed for eventual success, and the learning achieved.

Transforming the BEF was not to be an easy process. Obviously, the German nation, allies and armies did all they could to thwart this transformation. The “total war” waged is the ultimate form of “competition”. Thus, difficult lessons of strategic management, people (both men and women) management, and resources utilisation had to be learned. Through the many innovations, the experience curve was climbed to achieve mastery over the German field army.

To turn the BEF from a force of 120,000 at the battle of Mons to nearly 2 million at the Armistice on the western front was a remarkable achievement. Despite the strains imposed by German military prowess, the many elements were combined successfully. Although applying warfare principles to company management has become popular in the past decade, this paper avoids coming to simplistic conclusions. Rather it presents the transformation as a case study and suggests linkages to modern project management practices though leaving it to the reader to consider how these might be best applied.

Over a century of state-sponsored construction of monuments, historic mythmaking and nationalist framings of WWI has ensured that it has become notoriously difficult to present the heritage of the Great War in an inclusive and non-selective way. In this paper the authors present a strategy and technology-driven solutions to overcome the selective heritage curation of modern conflict.

Building on a suite of tools, applications and cultural heritage management plans developed by the In Flanders Fields Museum (IFFM), this paper explores the challenges of preserving and curating conflict heritage. The authors investigate the philosophy, cultural heritage management strategies and exhibitions used to curate the heritage of the Ypres Salient (Belgium).

The paper argues that historical aerial photographs integrated in multimedia exhibits present themselves as a fascinating source bringing the landscape within the walls of the museum. Mobile augmented reality (AR) applications developed by the museum go one step beyond and bring museum techniques to the landscape.

This paper presents a strategy to present, manage and curate the entirety of conflict heritage from the modern period. Faced with growing politicisation and memorialisation of modern conflict, it is extremely important that inclusive heritage management and curation is insured. The reflections on different curatorial techniques used by the IFFM can contribute globally towards a better heritage engagement.

An innovative and meaningful framework enables a more historically nuanced visitor experience to key heritage sites throughout the Ypres Salient.

Ensuring a non-selective heritage experience is especially pressing today. Over the past century canonised and national narratives have prescribed our understanding of the First World War across Europe and beyond.

Adopting a critical stance towards the proliferation in AR apps and applying theories from anthropology and phenomenology has been developed combining AR with arboreal landscape relics.