Hospitality IT: What Does the Future Hold?

The impact of information technology (IT) is far-reaching and driving dramatic shifts in business paradigms. Trends suggest greater adoption of IT will continue and develop at accelerating rates. Hence, hotel operators and executives must learn how to embrace IT and capitalize on the many capabilities it has to offer while minimizing the threats. The authors attempt to provide a sense of focus and a roadmap to help hoteliers understand the issues, see the future, and find an appropriate on ramp to the information superhighway

The Future of EMU: What Does the History of Monetary Unions Tell Us?

The creation of EMU and the ECB has triggered a discussion of the future of EMU. Independent observers have pointed to a number of shortcomings or hazard areas' in the construction of EMU, such as the absence of a central lender of last resort function for EMU, the lack of a central authority supervising the financial systems of EMU, unclear and inconsistent policy guidelines for the ECB, the absence of central co-ordination of fiscal policies within EMU, unduly strict criteria for domestic debt and deficits, as set out in the Maastricht rules, in the face of asymmetric shocks, and Euroland as not an optimal' currency area. Do these 'flaws' represent major threats to the future of EMU? Or will they be successfully resolved by the European policy authorities, leading to a lasting and prosperous EMU? We provide answers to these questions by examining the historical record of monetary unions. We try to extract the key conditions for establishing and for maintaining monetary unions intact. Our main lesson from the history of monetary unions is that political factors will be the central determinants of the future of EMU. The 'economic' shortcomings of EMU will likely be overcome as long as political unity prevails within EMU.

What does the future hold for intermediate care?

Intermediate care (IC) is seen as a key element in government policy to reduce hospital waiting lists, it was developed to promote independence for older people by developing a range of integrated health and social care services fully networked into local hospital, community Health, social services and primary care services. It was specifically designed around the needs of older people to facilitate hospital discharges and prevent admissions in other words; it is a bridge between home and hospital. In some localities older people with mental health problems or varying degrees of cognitive impairment including dementia are deliberately being excluded from intermediate care. This is based on the assumption that older people with dementia cannot benefit from rehabilitation. The UK has an ageing population as a result of declines both in fertility rates and in the mortality rate. The older people population growth combined with the prevalence of dementia increasing with age has implications for local authorities, and to meet the challenges of an ageing society, and address the needs of all older people there needs to be a rethink in intermediate care service delivery. This study looks at planning and forecasting models that can be used to predict service demand and plan for future the future of IC. A total of seven authorities including Liverpool City Council (LCC) participated in this research. Interviews and surveys explored current service provision to determine what if any specialist intermediate care was available for older people with a diagnosis of dementia. It then went on to establish what if any planning and forecasting systems were being used by the authorities to assist in meeting the challenges of an ageing society. Results drawn from the data analysis showed that even among top performing authorities the approach to forecasting and forward planning is not very sophisticated, only a couple of authorities seem to be taking an objective, quantitative and systematic approach to determine future requirements in older peoples services

Book review: a manifesto for the public university by John Holmwood

What does the future hold for higher education? Is the university set to become like the panopticon, where academics are constantly surveyed and regulated in the name of efficiency? Tony Murphy finds that A Manifesto for the Public University is a must for all those with vested interests in HE: students, researchers, and VCs, as well as policy makers actively engaged in shaping the future

Civil Rights 3.0

It is now commonplace to hear the LGBT rights movement being described as the last, or the next, or today’s, pre-eminent civil rights issue. This chapter will explore what that means from several perspectives: What does the label tell us about the civil rights paradigm itself? If the achievement of marriage equality is the great civil rights achievement of this generation, what does that suggest about a future for equality more generally? How have new forms of, and technologies for, movement building affected the idea and practice of civil rights? Does the civil rights paradigm have a future? I focus in on three aspects of the social meaning of civil rights: legal doctrine and legal institutions, social movement strategies, and the tension between the discourse of challenges to social hierarchy and that of civil rights. What we learn is that LGBT advocates have contributed to the overall project of formal equality under law primarily by developing an extraordinary strategic and tactical dexterity, uniquely so at the state level and in its alliance with the business sector. As to the latter, however, there are serious potential disadvantages. In the current political framework, the possibility of advances in substantive equality law-–either statutory or Constitutional-–has shrunken to the point that, even as LGBT rights groups make breakthroughs in achieving goals such as marriage equality, they will do well to avoid having to take backward steps with regard to such overarching concepts as the disparate impact principle or heightened scrutiny. For the future, the big question for this movement-–and all other social justice movements in the United States-–is whether it will deploy its talents and resources to challenge embedded, structural forms of discrimination

Entrepreneurial Literary Theory: A Debate on Research and the Future of Academia

Across the world at present, researchers and teachers are being exhorted to become entrepreneurial. Universities are being restructured accordingly. The debate presented in this book considers what that involves and portends for academia. Literary studies are often regarded as the most resistant to – unfit for – entrepreneurial purposes. Literary research is therefore taken as a baseline for this debate. The uneasy place of literary research within profit-driven academia is revealing of the prevailing conditions for scholarship in all areas. Questions that are raised and discussed here include: What does doing research for the public good mean? What is the relationship between profits and benefits from research? What are applied and basic research? Are concepts of academic freedom and disinterestedness meaningful? What is the relationship between corporate and academic research? Are skills and knowledge different? Can pursuits like close reading and text interpretation be made profitable? What is literary value and how can it be measured? Can the literary system be modelled to profitable ends? Can university teaching be automatized? What are the differences between a standard publication agreement and a scholarly publication agreement? How can digital and open-access academic publication be made profitable? Does the academic monograph have a future? What sorts of knowledge and skills inform entrepreneurial leadership

What does the future hold for global stock exchanges after COVID?

The COVID pandemic is altering the face of stock exchanges worldwide and threatens the continued hegemony of the American NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Tensions between the US and China and Brexit contribute to the crisis. Alissa Kole writes that developed market stock exchanges, remade as technology companies, will face an uphill battle in light of unfolding political and financial dynamics

S3E2: What does the future look like for Maine’s wild blueberries?

Along with lobsters and lighthouses, wild blueberries are an iconic product from the state of Maine. While the industry has struggled of late, promising developments exist for wild blueberries and the people who grow and make products out of them. UMaine\u27s wild blueberry expert Lily Calderwood shares her thoughts on the work being done at the university to grow the industry and what the past, present and future holds for this delicious, native crop

Developing LCA-based benchmarks for sustainable consumption - for and with users

This article presents the development process of a consumer-oriented, illustrative benchmarking tool enabling consumers to use the results of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to make informed decisions. Active and environmentally conscious consumers and environmental communicators were identified as key target groups for this type of information. A brochure presenting the benchmarking tool was developed as an participatory, iterative process involving consumer focus groups, stakeholder workshops and questionnaire-based feedback. In addition to learning what works and what does not, detailed suggestions on improved wording and figures were obtained, as well as a wealth of ideas for future applications