Attitudes of future professionals in tourism to change the image of destination Bulgaria

The research of attitudes of future professionals in the field of tourism could be regarded as a main reference point to outline opportunities for changing the image of a particular destination. Human resources who are coming to enrich and replace the current work force in tourism will have the decisive commitment to make marketing transformation shifts according to the pending requirements of geopolitical, social, economic and pandemic crises in 21st century. For that reason the research goal of this paper is to envisage a possible direction of change of the image  of tourist destination Bulgaria based on the expressed attitudes of future professional for a new sustainable market position of the country. The author’s findings and conclusions on the research topic are empirically based on the opinions of interviewed students enrolled in master and bachelor degree university programs in tourism

Inflaming public debate: a methodology to determine origin and characteristics of hate speech about sexual and gender diversity on Twitter

This article is focused on the reproduction of ideologically charged messages whose origins or interests remain hidden from public opinion. There is an urgent need for transparency regarding polarised debates that deform, impede or distort the critical approach that any society should be able to construct concerning issues of great social interest, especially on social media platforms and networks. Research has shown that hostility has colonised digital communication through misogynist, homophobic, transphobic or xenophobic messages, among others, and that, for the most part, these are not spontaneous or individual interactions. In the virtual space, there are forces that, although invisible outside it, construct narratives, generate disinformation and feed generally regressive ideological approaches. Thus, in the name of transparency and social justice, there is an urgent need to investigate these types of messages, as well as their possible destabilising interests at a time of special presence and reputation of discourses such as the feminist one, which is currently experiencing a significant reactionary response. This paper investigates the origin and characteristics of the conversation on the social network Twitter concerning gender and sexual identities. To this end, we studied a significant sample of tweets (>1 million) related to women’s rights, the LGBTIQ+ collective and trans people, for a full year. Computerised methodologies by means of machine learning techniques, natural language processing (NLP), determination of bots, geolocation, and the application of network theories were used to carry out the study. The results include the highly interrelated presence of groups without clear referents, as well as the existence of what appear to be coordinated networks aimed at causing harm and provoking confrontation

Agency Choice of Policymaking Form

An administrative agency delegated some task--protect the environment, assure the integrity of the securities markets, improve auto safety--might carry out that obligation by adopting a rule, bringing or deciding a case, or announcing its interpretation of the statute. Although agencies are unique institutions in this respect, this state of affairs generates little comment. This Article aims to rectify that by identifying, evaluating, and coming to terms with the phenomenon of agency choice of policymaking form. That phenomenon can be simply stated: The typical administrative agency is authorized to use a range of distinct policymaking forms to effectuate its statutory mandate and its choice about which tool to rely on appears, at first glance at least, to be unregulated by courts. Part I of the Article will discuss the policymaking tools that statutes and case law typically make available, the significance of the choice among them, and the varying choices that agencies make. Part II takes up the judicial reaction to agency choices of procedure. That judicial reaction, at least at first blush, can be simply described: hands-off. An agency can choose among its available policymaking tools and a court will not require it to provide an explanation for its choice. This judicial reaction is perplexing because it is out of step with the rest of the law of judicial review of agency action. This Part examines possible reasons why courts might treat agency choices of procedure differently than other exercises of discretion, but dismisses each of them as implausible. After setting forth this puzzle in the structure of the law, this Part offers an explanation for it. That explanation is rooted in the fact that courts have a surprising degree of control over the consequences of an agency\u27s choice of form. By adjusting the consequences of choosing one form or another, courts have the opportunity to respond to whatever concerns they might have about an agency\u27s choice. Courts thus review agency choices of procedure, albeit in a roundabout way. Parts I and II are devoted to identifying and analyzing the phenomenon of agency choice of policymaking form. That task is the main object of the Article because these features of administrative law and practice are not now considered worthy of notice. After noticing them, though, the next step is to come to terms with them. Part III of the Article starts that task

The Self-Delegation False Alarm: Analyzing \u3ci\u3eAuer\u3c/i\u3e Deference\u27s Effect on Agency Rules

Auer deference holds that reviewing courts should defer to agencies when the latter interpret their own preexisting regulations. This doctrine relieves pressure on agencies to undergo costly notice-and-comment rulemaking each time interpretation of existing regulations is necessary. But according to some leading scholars and jurists, the doctrine actually encourages agencies to promulgate vague rules in the first instance, augmenting agency power and violating core separation of powers norms in the process. The claim that Auer perversely encourages agencies to “self-delegate”—that is, to create vague rules that can later be informally interpreted by agencies with latitude due to judicial deference—has helped to persuade the Supreme Court to take up this term the question of whether to overturn the doctrine. Yet, surprisingly, the self-delegation thesis has never been tested. This Article scrutinizes the thesis empirically, using an original and extensive dataset of the texts of federal rules from 1982 to 2016. My linguistic analysis reveals that agencies did not measurably increase the vagueness of their writing in response to Auer. If anything, rule writing arguably became more specific over time, at least by one measure, despite Auer’s increasing prominence. These findings run against common wisdom, but they should not be at all surprising. The self-delegation thesis depends on a model of agency behavior that is inconsistent with what is known about the institutional pressures and cognitive horizons that cause agencies to pursue clarity in rule writing. By revealing the failures of theoretical predictions about Auer, this Article more generally draws attention to the need to test behavioral theories of administrative law against empirical reality before unsettling settled law

Understanding the determinants of e-commerce uptake, e-service quality and e-commerce success, in the UK on-line retail sector

The primary aim of this study is to gain important new insights into e-commerce success, by empirically exploring how approaches to e-service quality, when coupled with levels of e-commerce adoption, might affect the overall success of retailers’ on-line operations. This study is governed by positivist epistemological perspective, and therefore, it was undertaken using a quantitative research methodology, based upon questionnaires. The primary data collection generated a total of 225 useable questionnaires, completed by senior managers, working within the UK’s on-line retail sector. Factor analysis and multiple regression analysis were then used to thoroughly explore the relationships between the various constructs, which comprised the research model. The results of the statistical analysis demonstrate that internal factors (e.g. as management strategy and resources) - are a stronger determinant, than external factors, of both. Perhaps more importantly, it has been shown that the perceived success of a retailer’s e-commerce operations is also strongly associated with the management approaches to e-service quality and the level of e-commerce adoption. Finally, a mediation analysis provides interesting new insights into the relationship between adoption levels, e-service quality and success: the management approaches to e-service quality significantly mediates the relationship between the level of e-commerce adoption and the perceived e-commerce success. Given the central role that e-service quality plays in this study, a customer focused study of e-service quality was also conducted, to provide a more complete and holistic view of this complex phenomenon. This supplementary study sought to explore how customers’ perceptions of e-service quality, particularly in terms of identifying those elements of service quality that influence their use of the retailers’ on-line services. An on-line questionnaire survey was designed and pre-tested before targeting it at 800 students, of whom over 25% responded. An ‘importance-performance’ analysis of this data was conducted to explore whether there were significant differences in customers’ perception of the importance against the performance of retailers’ ability to manage e-service quality. By and large, the results of this analysis should provide some reassurance to the on-line retailers, as the customers generally believed that the retailers were performing well in the areas that were most important to them. However, when the results of the customer and retailer studies were compared, some interesting imbalances were revealed. For example, the retailers perceived the provision of privacy policies to be extremely important, whilst generally; the customers weren’t too concerned with this aspect of e-service quality. The thesis concludes by highlighting its contribution to the body of current knowledge, reviewing the limitations of the research and exploring the implications for practice of the many interesting new insights generated through this empirical study

Rogue and Deviants: A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Opportunism in Strategic Alliance Relationships

Opportunistic behavior is often studied in interfirm relationships, yet we don’t know the different types of behavior that are hidden behind the general opportunism label. Therefore, using game theory as guidance, this dissertation examines the roots of and influences on two types of opportunistic behaviors in strategic alliances. Specifically, the author suggests that the strategic alliances literature would benefit from recognizing that opportunistic behaviors don’t always originate from the firm (rogue-firm opportunism), but instead often originate from individual alliance employees (deviant-personal opportunism). Moreover, this dissertation examines how relational factors between two alliance partners impact these two types of opportunistic behaviors. The relational factors considered in this dissertation are trust, monitoring, and relative alliance identity. Hypotheses presented in this dissertation are tested across two studies. The first study utilizes a behavioral business simulation. It combines survey data collection with objective performance data obtained from the simulation. The second study investigates the hypothesized relationships in a cross-sectional sample of strategic alliance executives. It primarily replies on survey data collection, but also introduces secondary data from SDC Platinum database

Body-ownership and visual perception

The idea that our body plays an important role in visual perception has a long history in storytelling and philosophy. Some ideas are very intuitive. For example, few will disagree with the notion that smaller people perceive the world to be bigger, and vice versa, that larger people perceive the world to be smaller. In contrast, more controversial ideas regarding the role of our body in visual perception have been debated by philosophers. According to these philosophers, the very nature of visual perception lies in the fact that we have a body that moves in space. Since George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) first formalized such a fundamental role for our body in visual perception, different philosophical theories have branched out to account for the latest scientific findings. Although experimental psychologists and neuroscientists have long neglected these intriguing philosophical accounts, the recent development of body-ownership illusions allowed for a more rigorous investigation of the supposed link between our body and visual perception. In body-ownership illusions, research participants experience an artificial body (or body-part) to be their own. These illusions allow for the dissociation between the subjective experience that your body belongs to you (i.e. body-ownership) and the mere visual impression of your body from a first-person perspective. The studies that comprise this thesis use different ownership illusions to investigate the role of body-ownership in visual perception, and the role of visual perception in body-ownership, with visual perception being an umbrella-term for both visuospatial perception and visual awareness. In Study I and Study II we investigated the mechanisms by which body-size influences the perceived size of the world, by having participants experience ownership of different sized (and sometimes invisible) bodies. Our results show that this own-body-size effect does not rely on visual information per se, but instead, on the recalibration between visual and tactile information that updates the representation of external space. In Study III we combine the rubber hand illusion with binocular rivalry to show that body-ownership promotes visual awareness of a fake hand. And in Study IV we combine the rubber hand illusion with continuous flash suppression to show that ownership can be induced in the absence of visual awareness. Such unconscious ownership calls for a reevaluation of the standard definition of body-ownership. Taken together, these studies illuminate the intricate relationship between body-ownership and visual perception. In addition to the scientific research fields of visuospatial perception, visual awareness, and body-ownership, these results are valuable to the philosophical debate on the nature of visual perception and might provide future applications in clinical psychology

Daoud, Israa (2021) The Impact of Innovation Capabilities and Institutional Distance on Competitive Advantage and New Export Product Performance. Doctoral thesis, Durham University

New Export Product Performance is an unexplored dimension of export performance given the rapid change in technology and markets that the firm face. Drawing on export performance and innovation literature, this study focusses on how firms can employ innovation capabilities, that is, the technological capability and new product development capability, which can best improve competitive advantage and new export product performance. Despite the exponential growth of studies focusing on export performance, the literature has not focused on new export product performance. In the current study, new export product performance conceptualized as the performance of new or/and significantly improved product(s) created for export only. Based on The Resource-Based View and Institutional Theory, we develop a model to investigate the role of innovation capabilities on the firm’s new export product performance. Accurately, this model depicts the consequence of innovation capabilities and focuses on the relationship among innovation capabilities, competitive advantage, and new export product performance. In addition, how institutional distance moderates the relationship between innovation capabilities and competitive advantage. Based on a survey of 218 UK-Based exporting organizations. The findings indicate that some UK exporting firms tend to develop new export products with a tremendous competitive advantage. The study further focuses on how institutional distance and competitive advantage constructs interact to create new export product performance. Findings also suggest that institutional distance has a negative and a positive moderating impact on competitive advantage. By further examining the moderating effects of institutional distance on the link between innovation capabilities and competitive advantage, the analyses reveal the different scenarios in which the benefits of innovation capability firms may outweigh its implementation cost. This study makes important contributions. 1. Highlights the important new export product performance construct. 2. Extends the RBV discuss by revealing the exact mediating effect of cost and differentiation competitive advantage on the innovation capabilities – new export product performance relationship. 3. Reveals the moderating effects of regulatory, normative, and cognitive institutional distance on the link between innovation capabilities and competitive advantage. 4. The analysis in this study reveals the different scenarios in which export related innovation capabilities benefits exporting firms that create new products for exports only, and this has practical implication