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The China threat is the first and most obvious answer when it comes to the question of threat perception in Taiwan, but the issue encompasses much more. The ruling elite for years considered the subject population a threat, for example, and even the nature and severity of the China threat varies greatly depending on an individual’s identification. How do those who identify as Taiwanese see the consequences of an attack from China? There is a very different threat perception among the Taiwanese population, who view annexation by China in much the same way as their Mainlander counterparts would see annexation by Japan, for example. Persons self-identifying as Taiwanese do not view themselves as being culturally the same as the people across the Taiwan Strait, having grown apart from them (in a cultural sense) over the past 120 years that they have been separated. Moreover, after Taiwan’s long history of being colonized by one alien power after another – from the Dutch and Spanish, to Koxinga, and then the Manchu dynasty; by the Japanese; and finally by the KMT (for being colonized is how many Taiwanese perceive the ROC period) – finally the inhabitants of the island have the opportunity to chart their own future, and enjoy a newfound sovereignty and identity separate from that of any colonizing power: thus the prospect of being colonized by China is anathema, and therefore a much greater existential threat for them than for Mainlanders.

Language and dialect, customs and service attitudes are just a few of the characteristics that make each culture unique. Consequently, the presence of people from different cultures during a service encounter may impact service quality, as what constitutes good service quality is perceived differently across cultures. As a country with a multicultural society, culturally diverse migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) play an increasingly important role in the Australian hospitality and accommodation sector. Within this regional context, this study aims to contribute to a more robust understanding of the influence of workforce cultural diversity on different aspects of front-desk accommodation service quality in the accommodation industry.

In this qualitative study, 31 semi-structured in-depth interviews with guests, front-desk staff and managers at service apartments in Western Australia were conducted, followed by validation interviews with five hospitality human resource management experts.

The results of the interviews suggest that cultural diversity of NESB staff affects several aspects of Australian accommodation front-desk services, including communication quality, staff-guest interaction and guest satisfaction. Findings point out that culturally diverse NESB front-desk staff may face cross-cultural communication barriers due to different foreign accents and the presence of local slang, improve guest-staff interaction and the overall guest experience in case of similar cultural backgrounds with guests and provide authentic representations of multiculturalism in Australia.

The study sheds new light on tourists’ shifting perceptions and expectations of authenticity, particularly in Australia, where cultural diversity has increased in prominence. Moreover, in the Australian accommodation service, many NESB employees who have learned American/British English have difficulty conversing with people with Australian accents, especially when Australian slang is also present.

本项定性研究针对西澳大利亚州服务公寓的客户、前台工作人员和经理进行了 31 次半结构化深度访谈, 随后对五位酒店人力资源管理专家进行了验证性访谈。

语言和方言、习俗和服务态度是能体现每种文化独特性的几个特征。因此, 在服务过程中人们文化背景的差异可能会影响服务质量, 因为不同文化对于良好服务质量的认知各不相同。澳大利亚作为一个多元文化社会的国家, 其酒店和住宿行业的发展愈发受到来自非英语背景（NESB）的多元文化移民的影响。因而, 本研究以澳大利亚为案例地有助于更深入地了解劳动力文化多样性对住宿行业前台住宿服务质量的多层面影响。

访谈结果表明, NESB 员工的文化多样性对于澳大利亚住宿前台服务的沟通质量、员工-宾客互动、以及宾客满意度等多方面都有影响。调查结果指出, 文化多元化的 NESB 前台工作人员：（1）可能由于不同的外国口音和当地俚语的存在而面临跨文化沟通障碍; （2） 接待相似文化背景的宾客时员工-宾客互动和整体宾客体验都会得到提升（3）代表澳大利亚多元文化的真实现状。

本研究为游客对原真性的看法和期望的转变提供了新的线索, 特别是在文化多样性日益突出的澳大利亚。此外, 在澳大利亚的住宿服务中, 许多学习过美式/英式英语的NESB员工很难与带有澳大利亚口音的宾客沟通, 更何况还需面对澳大利亚俚语。

El idioma y el dialecto, las costumbres y las actitudes de servicio son sólo algunas de las características que hacen que cada cultura sea única. En consecuencia, la presencia de personas de diferentes culturas durante un encuentro de servicio puede repercutir en la calidad del servicio, ya que lo que constituye una buena calidad de servicio se percibe de forma diferente en las distintas culturas. Como país con una sociedad multicultural, los inmigrantes culturalmente diversos de origen no angloparlante (NESB) desempeñan un papel cada vez más importante en el sector de la hostelería y el alojamiento en Australia. Dentro de este contexto regional, este estudio contribuye a una comprensión más sólida de la influencia de la diversidad cultural de la mano de obra en diferentes aspectos de la calidad del servicio de recepción en el sector del alojamiento.

En este estudio cualitativo se realizaron 31 entrevistas en profundidad semiestructuradas a huéspedes, personal de recepción y gerentes de apartamentos en Australia Occidental, seguidas de entrevistas de validación con cinco expertos en gestión de recursos humanos del sector de la hostelería.

Los resultados de las entrevistas sugieren que la diversidad cultural del personal de los NESB afecta a varios aspectos de los servicios de recepción de los alojamientos australianos, como la calidad de la comunicación, la interacción entre el personal y los huéspedes y la satisfacción de éstos. Los hallazgos señalan que el personal de recepción de los NESB culturalmente diverso puede (1) enfrentarse a barreras de comunicación intercultural debido a los diferentes acentos extranjeros y a la presencia de jerga local, (2) mejorar la interacción huésped-personal y la experiencia general del huésped en caso de tener antecedentes culturales similares con los huéspedes, y (3) proporcionar representaciones auténticas del multiculturalismo en Australia.

El estudio arroja nueva luz sobre las cambiantes percepciones y expectativas de autenticidad de los turistas, especialmente en Australia, donde la diversidad cultural ha cobrado mayor protagonismo. Además, en el servicio de alojamiento australiano, muchos empleados de NESB que han aprendido inglés americano/británico tienen dificultades para conversar con personas con acento australiano, sobre todo cuando también está presente la jerga australiana.

The author establishes a point of criticism against various positions regarding technology, especially the proposal of De Kerckhove on the role of social networks in life.

To that end the present text has four sections. The first presents a way to study society from the point of view of its symbolic production, understood as an inseparable whole. Second, this symbolic dimension of all human society, is differentiated in three inseparable components: information, communication, and knowledge. Third, having established these analytical differentiations, the text underlines the importance of the systemic relationship between internal brain and extra-cortical formations or “external” brain, to understand the human complex relations with technology. Finally, the text presents the Cultural Fronts approach as a theoretical and methodological tool for the study of the social production of hegemony and subalternity on scales of everyday life. The methodological fecundity of this category has been proven in a variety of field studies since 1982 and is the basis of the perspective of action research that the author calls “cybercultur@,” understood as the collective development of intelligent self-determination capabilities confronting concrete social problems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between innovative culture, innovation efforts, and their performance among knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). Innovation intensity is evaluated in the technical and administrative domains. Performance indicators include customer-related outcomes and market and financial results relative to competition. To provide insight into how innovativeness contributes to sustaining a KIBS' competitiveness, the mediating role of its predisposition to involve customers and front-line employees in new service development is also considered.

In accordance with the objectives of the research, and from an extensive review of the literature, the authors develop a conceptual model and test it on a sample of 154 Spanish KIBS using structural equation modelling.

The results show that KIBS' appraisal of customers' and front-line employees' participation in new service co-creation is strongly determined by the firm's innovative culture. Organizations with a greater predisposition to new service co-creation achieve higher innovation rates which lead to sustained performance.

As dynamism of the KIBS sector has an impact on the whole economy it is also necessary to understand the most advisable management practices in KIBS to foster innovation and improved performance, although relatively few studies have approached this issue. The importance of customers and front-line employees as co-creators in new service development (NSD) is generally appreciated, although the literature is not conclusive with respect to the feasibility of co-creation and its influence on a firm's performance. The present research introduces an organizational perspective to approach co-creation by analyzing how various organizational cultural types (innovativeness, and the appraisal of front-line employees and customers as co-creators in NSD) interact and contribute to KIBS' competitiveness.

This paper aims to explore the important role boundaries play in back-office framing of environmental engagement. This is of particular interest because it is not clear how organizations in an industry without standardized environmental reporting navigate their boundaries behind the scenes and why they engage with the environment the way they do. This element of their environmental identity offers important insights into the emergence of sustainability reporting.

Guided by Miles and Ringham (2019) the authors conduct an ethnography of the Montana ski industry. The ethnography includes extensive on-site observations at nine Montana ski areas and interviews with 16 ski area executives, two regulators and a land development executive.

The authors find three key boundaries – accountability structure, degree of regulatory burden and impact measurement approach – that shape the back-office economic and environmental framing of ski executives (Goffman, 1959, 1974). From these back-office frames the authors identify four front-office cultural performances – community ecosystem, quantitative ownership, approval seeking and advocacy platform – that represent the environmental engagement strategies at these resorts.

Understanding the relationships between boundaries and environmental engagement is an important step in developing appropriate industry-wide environmental accountability and sustainability expectations. The study’s findings extend to other industries that are both highly dependent on the environment and are in the early stages of developing environmental reporting standards.

Ski resorts operate in an industry that is impacted by changes in the natural environment. The authors chronicle the process by which boundaries lead to framing which leads to environmental engagement in this weather-dependent industry. The authors explain the process of environmental identity building, the result of which both precedes environmental reporting and puts such reporting into context. In this sense, the authors show how boundaries are set and maintained in the ski resort industry, and how fundamental these boundaries are to the development of individual companies' environmental engagement strategies.

International trade in services is growing rapidly despite many barriers to trade. Consumer services are being established world wide and increasingly business services are becoming globalized in much the same way that manufacturing is outsourcing overseas. The manager of a service organization can no longer ignore international competition in services, especially the globalization of back‐room operations. Service managers need a framework in which to develop a global service strategy. Addresses two questions which managers face when developing a global service strategy: what are the factors that we can use to classify services in terms of their potential for moving globally; and how do these factors translate into strategies for the globalization of specific services? The most common dimensions for classifying service operations include consumer involvement and customization, complexity of inputs and outputs, and labour intensity. Examines five generic strategies: multi‐country expansion; importing customers; following your customers; service unbundling; and beating the clock.

From time immemorial until about a generation ago, the UAE desert-roaming Bedouins were living in tents (hair houses) which they themselves had innovated, constructed and elaborated. They had done this in such a way as to ensure that their practical need for accommodation was met, that the constraints of their physical environment were taken into account, and that their own social and religious obligations could be discharged. Then almost overnight the tents disappeared and with them the way of life they represented.

As a consequence of the UAE government's policy in the early urbanization and resettlement of the country's nomadic population, the previous occupants of the hair houses found themselves residents of the so-called “housing areas” on the outskirts of the UAE cities and towns. The problems arising from this sudden transformation are the focus of this study which aims to demonstrate that while the resettled Bedouins turned to embrace the modern life in their new homes, they were mentally and emotionally drawn to their past lifestyle in which the hair house, more than merely providing accommodation, was an expression of personality and culture.

To this end, this study documents and analyzes the southern version of the hair house (otherwise known as the “winter house”), previously the most common in the UAE desert. The study will consider not only that the hair house was a masterpiece of innovative construction suited to the Bedouin's environment and culture but also, as comparison at different levels shows, the inadequacy of the urban cement house as the Bedouin's current-day accommodation. Consequently, the study recommends that future housing projects targeted at the resettled Bedouins should be designed with a view to harmonizing the needs and requirements of contemporary life with the rich heritage of the Bedouins.

In carrying out this study, the researcher has utilized a combination of research tools, primarily theoretical, descriptive and analytical together with field visits and personal interviews with former residents of the hair houses and the curators of the Heritage Village in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital. In contrast, as the “housing areas” are still in existence, the scope of the study is limited to the hair house which it tries to recover and reconstruct as a point of reference for the thesis of the study.

The purpose of this study is to discern the underlying dimensions of destination branding and social media in the socio-geographical context of Pakistan. The study while selecting an event – Pakistan Tourism Summit 2019 – has explored the narratives of foreign social media influencers (SMIs). These narratives and content of tourism website of Pakistan have been comparatively analyzed to disentangle the voluntary and involuntary branding eventualities.

Qualitative research strategy has been adopted. Using the interface of NVivo 12, thematic analysis on the narratives of foreign influencers and content of tourism website has been performed. Eventually, influencer’s videos and website’s content have been transcribed and integrated into inductive themes.

The findings implies that multiple halt points exist in tourism branding of Pakistan. Stigmatized image as a dangerous place for visitation, superficial/exaggerated branding by the influencers, colonial mindset to marginalize the domestic influencers, domestic branding through foreign influencers and veiled tourism potential are the various dimensions emerged during analysis phase.

Given the limitations of the qualitative research approach, the current study lacks statistical avenues of quantitative or mix-method studies. Selection of a single event and website further limits this study and calls for the necessity of future studies having wider units of data collection and other portals of social media.

For policy makers, academia and supply sector, this study offers touchpoints to be emphasized in the strategic, legal and theoretical fronts of destination branding.

Despite the hegemony of SMIs in destination branding, there is scarcity of research on the paybacks of such branding campaigns. This endeavor in response to this call, accentuated the destination branding via foreign social media activists regarding the tourism potential of Pakistan. Findings provides novel insights and branding ethos deemed necessary to be considered in destination branding strategies/campaigns.