Assessing the conflict resolution potential of the EU: the Cyprus conflict and accession negotiations

This article treats conflict prevention and conflict transformation as foreign policy tools that are available to international actors alongside classical security-based foreign policy measures. It investigates the conflict resolution role of the EU on the Cyprus conflict in the context of EU accession negotiations. For this purpose, the article: (a) depicts the changes in the roles the EU has played on the island within the context of the accession negotiations; (b) illustrates the nature of structural prevention measures that the EU has taken; and (c) describes the consequences of the EU involvement on UN-led negotiation efforts. The results suggest that the EU has treated the enlargement process as a structural prevention mechanism to change the incentive systems of the conflicting parties neglecting the conflict-transformation aspects of foreign policymaking. Thus far, this has produced inefficient policies and resulted in the EU bringing an aged conflict into its own jurisdiction. Vision-building, capacity-building, and synergy-building are the three strategies that may help the EU to expand its foreign policy toolbox and to become an influential player in world politics

eWOM, revisit intention, destination trust and gender

WOS: 000405614200024This article investigates the impact of eWOM on intention to revisit and destination trust, and the moderating role of gender in medical tourism industry. Result from structural equation modeling (n = 240) suggests the following: (1) that eWOM influences intention to revisit and destination trust; (2) that destination trust influences intention to revisit; (3) that the impact of eWOM on intention to revisit is about 1.3 times higher in men; (4) that the impact of eWOM on destination trust is about 1.2 times higher in men; and (5) the impact of destination trust on the intention to revisit is about 2.3 times higher in women. Implications and future research directions are discussed. (C)3 2017 The Authors

A hover view over effectual approaches on pandemic management for sustainable cities – The endowment of prospective technologies with revitalization strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic affects all of society and hinders day-to-day activities from a straightforward perspective. The pandemic has an influential impact on almost everything and the characteristics of the pandemic remain unclear. This ultimately leads to ineffective strategic planning to manage the pandemic. This study aims to elucidate the typical pandemic characteristics in line with various temporal phases and its associated measures that proved effective in controlling the pandemic. Besides, an insight into diverse country’s approaches towards pandemic and their consequences is provided in brief. Understanding the role of technologies in supporting humanity gives new perspectives to effectively manage the pandemic. Such role of technologies is expressed from the viewpoint of seamless connectivity, rapid communication, mobility, technological influence in healthcare, digitalization influence, surveillance and security, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT). Furthermore, some insightful scenarios are framed where the full-fledged implementation of technologies is assumed, and the reflected pandemic impacts in such scenarios are analyzed. The framed scenarios revolve around the digitalized energy sector, an enhanced supply chain system with effective customer-retailer relationships to support the city during the pandemic scenario, and an advanced tracking system for containing virus spread. The study is further extended to frame revitalization strategies to highlight the expertise where significant attention needs to be provided in the post-pandemic period as well as to nurture sustainable development. Finally, the current pandemic scenario is analyzed in terms of occurred changes and is mapped into SWOT factors. Using Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, these SWOT factors are analyzed to determine where prioritized efforts are needed to focus so as to traverse towards sustainable cities. The results indicate that the enhanced crisis management ability and situational need to restructure the economic model emerges to be the most-significant SWOT factor that can ultimately support humanity for making the cities sustainable