Olympic legacy and cultural tourism: Exploring the facets of Athens' Olympic heritage

This study examines the effects of the Olympic Games on Athens’ cultural tourism and the city’s potential to leverage the Olympic legacy in synergy with its rich heritage in order to enhance its tourism product during the post-Games period. In doing so, a qualitative and interpretive approach was employed. This includes a literature review on Athens’ 2004 Olympics to identify the sport facilities and regeneration projects, which constitute the Olympic legacy and heritage. Based on that, an empirical analysis was undertaken, by collecting official documents about the 2004 Olympics, and conducting five semi-structured interviews with tourism/administrative officials. The findings indicate that the Olympiad contributed significantly to Athens’ built and human heritage, revealing the dimensions of new venues/facilities, infrastructure, transportation and aesthetic image of the city, and human capital enhancement. Hence, the Games affected to the multifaceted representation and reconstruction of the city’s identity and cultural heritage. However, the potential afforded from the post-Olympic Athens remains unrealised due to lack of strategic planning/management. The study concludes that there is a need to develop cross-leveraging synergies between the Olympic legacy and cultural tourism for the host city. Finally, a strategic planning framework for leveraging post-Games Olympic tourism is suggested in order to maximise the benefits of Olympic legacy and heritage in a host city’s tourism development

Fostering Chinese firms through entrepreneurship, globalisation and international finance

The success of ventures that have pursued non traditional marketing approaches may be attributed to a range of forward thinking practices which it is argued here, should be the starting and finishing points for Chinese companies. Chinese multinationals need to develop entrepreneurial ability more compatible with their growth in the international markets. Chinas educational framework is still largely based on rote learning, which is a method typically seen as ill suited to modern needs. Many Chinese high tech sectors are still dominated by overseas know-how and the ongoing strength of wholly foreign- owned enterprises

Media Management Trends and Tools 2012

Businesses increasingly find themselves competing in highly dynamic markets, making visibility of the future limited and the strategic way forward ambiguous. This report presents the findings from a survey of UK media executives and identifies their outlook for the industry, and an evaluation of their usage and satisfaction with the tools that they use to manage their businesses. The survey found four strong themes amongst media executives. These were related to the launch of new products and services, seeking innovation through collaborative partnerships, leveraging their brand and content through new platforms, and uncertainty regarding the future direction of the industry

Appropriation of value in Biomedical research outcome at Public Research Organisations

Transactions on biomedical research outcomes bring into play strategies that are determined by leveraging resources into quasi-markets and on options based on expectations. To govern such transactions, the choice of appropriate governance structures and the governance of interaction are all too often in remittance of risk and uncertainty. Organisation and communities are prompted by issues concerning intellectual property (IP) to underwrite information, which is inherently fraught with difficulties of discerning ownership and quantifying qualitative business variables. Against that backdrop, we enquire on the mechanisms underpinning value dissipation and value appropriation of biomedical research outcomes to make proposition on the organisational antecedence to innovation. It is a preamble study with the view to developing a meso-level framework to describe mechanisms of value appropriation of upstream biomedical (non-invasive) research at Public Research Organisation. Its underpinning is largely based on the availability appropriability regimes and viability of organizational governance decisions and how the choice of organizational governance form affects both the creation and appropriation of economic value

Accredited qualifications for capacity development in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation

Increasingly practitioners and policy makers working across the globe are recognising the importance of bringing together disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. From studies across 15 Pacific island nations, a key barrier to improving national resilience to disaster risks and climate change impacts has been identified as a lack of capacity and expertise resulting from the absence of sustainable accredited and quality assured formal training programmes in the disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation sectors. In the 2016 UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, it was raised that most of the training material available are not reviewed either through a peer-to-peer mechanism or by the scientific community and are, thus, not following quality assurance standards. In response to these identified barriers, this paper focuses on a call for accredited formal qualifications for capacity development identified in the 2015 United Nations landmark agreements in DRR and CCA and uses the Pacific Islands Region of where this is now being implemented with the launch of the Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals, for DRR and CCA. A key issue is providing an accreditation and quality assurance mechanism that is shared across boundaries. This paper argues that by using the United Nations landmark agreements of 2015, support for a regionally accredited capacity development that ensures all countries can produce, access and effectively use scientific information for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The newly launched Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals who work in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation may offer a model that can be used more widely

The Tacit Knowledge Problem in Multinational Corporations: Japanese and US Offshore Knowledge Incubators

This paper examines the ‘cognitive’ and ‘societal’ aspects of the tacit knowledge transfer problem in MNCs. Based on a comparative analysis of the overseas R&D labs of US and Japanese MNCs in the UK, it examines how home-based models of learning influence MNCs’ transnational social spaces for learning and their capabilities to address the tacit knowing problem. It illustrates how the US professional ‘networks of practice’ (NoP) and the Japanese organizational ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) approaches to transnational learning unfold in practice. It also examines how divergence between home and host country institutions governing knowledge production inhibits cross-societal tacit knowing.comparative thinking; tacit knowledge; knowledge transfer in MNCs; innovation and R&D; organizational learning; communities of practice

Resources, Capabilities, and Routines in Public Organization

States, state agencies, multilateral agencies, and other non-market actors are relatively under-studied in the strategic entrepreneurship literature. While important contributions examining public decision makers have been made within the agency-theoretic and transaction-cost traditions, there is little research that builds on resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to organizations. Yet public organizations can be usefully characterized as stocks of physical, organizational, and human resources; they interact with other organizations in pursuing a type of competitive advantage; they can possess excess capacity, and may grow and diversify in part according to Penrosean (dynamic) capabilities and behavioral logic. Public organizations may be managed as stewards of resources, capabilities, and routines. This paper shows how resource-based, (dynamic) capabilities, and behavioral approaches shed light on the nature and governance of public organizations and suggests a research agenda for public entrepreneurship that reflects insights gained from applying strategic management theory to public organization.

A Framework for Integrating Transportation Into Smart Cities

In recent years, economic, environmental, and political forces have quickly given rise to “Smart Cities” -- an array of strategies that can transform transportation in cities. Using a multi-method approach to research and develop a framework for smart cities, this study provides a framework that can be employed to: Understand what a smart city is and how to replicate smart city successes; The role of pilot projects, metrics, and evaluations to test, implement, and replicate strategies; and Understand the role of shared micromobility, big data, and other key issues impacting communities. This research provides recommendations for policy and professional practice as it relates to integrating transportation into smart cities