Planning: Applied Rationality or Contingent Practice?

This paper develops an interactional approach to planning in organisations that draws out the relevance of both rationalist and contingent models of planning. The distinction between these two models is developed in the light of the modernist / postmodernist debate to provide a set of theoretical issues to with planning in organisations. These issues are explored in the context of planning carried out in two empirically studied settings, a health authority and a school. The two models are found to provide resources for organisations and participants in these settings, both to proceed with planning activity and to account for it. Neither model is however adequate to describe the process of planning which is always a practical and situated activity whose character emerges in the process of interaction

Hospitality marketing: Principles and practice (2nd Edition)

Ideal for those new to the topic of marketing, this book discusses the eight elements of the marketing mix with direct reference to the specifics of the hospitality industry.Part A: Introduction: Introduction to hospitality marketing; Part B: Pre-encounter marketing; Marketing research; Understanding and segmenting customers; Competitive strategies; Developing the offer; Locating the offer; Pricing the offer; Distributing the offer; Communicating the offer; Part C: Encounter marketing; Managing the physical environment; Managing service processes; Managing customer-contact employees; Part D: Post-encounter marketing; Managing customer satisfaction; Relationship marketing; Part E: The marketing plan; Marketing Planning.434 page(s)2nd ed

Markovian assignment rules

We analyze dynamic assignment problems where agents successively receive different objects (positions, offices, etc.). A finite set of n vertically differentiated indivisible objects are assigned to n agents who live n periods. At each period, a new agent enters society, and the oldest agent retires, leaving his object to be reassigned. We define independent assignment rules (where the assignment of an object to an agent is independent of the way other objects are allocated to other agents), efficient assignment rules (where there does not exist another assignment rule with larger expected surplus), and fair assignment rules (where agents experiencing the same circumstances have identical histories in the long run). When agents are homogenous, we characterize efficient, independent and fair rules as generalizations of the seniority rule. When agents draw their types at random, we prove that independence and efficiency are incompatible, and that efficient and fair rules only exist when there are two types of agents. We characterize two simple rules (type-rank and type-seniority) which satisfy both efficiency and fairness criteria in dichotomous settings.dynamic assignment, finite Markov chains, seniority, promotion rules