The mythological power of hospitality leaders? : a hermeneutical investigation of their reliance on storytelling

Aims to explore how senior leaders in the hospitality industry use storytelling to disseminate their vision to employees. To illustrate how hermeneutics can be used as a method for the interpretation of qualitative data in hospitality management research. A purposeful criterion based sample design was constructed and after a period of sensitisation to their organisations, twenty phenomenological interviews with high level international hospitality industry leaders were conducted. These interviews are analysed using a hermeneutical framework. Storytelling is being used as a strategic method of communication and is fundamental to leadership in the contemporary commercial hospitality industry; stories are used to strengthen and revitalise current norms and values. Stories penetrate organisations and tap into the emotions of employees in order to inspire action and understanding.Hermeneutics is applied clearly and concisely and the paper demonstrates how hermeneutics could easily be adapted for other projects. Clear direction for further research is suggested, exploring the efficaciousness of stories from the listeners' rather than narrator's perspective. This paper does not teach managers how to tell stories, or even make them better storytellers; however, it highlights how storytelling is used by leaders at the apex of the commercial hospitality industry to develop and enhance organisational culture. Within hospitality management research, storytelling has mostly been ignored both as a management tool and as a form of data collection; similarly hermeneutics as a means of data analysis does not feature in the hospitality management literature

Leadership and storytelling : perspectives from senior hospitality management

This paper presents initial findings on how twenty leaders, at the highest level in the international hospitality industry, use stories to create, disseminate and sustain corporate culture within their organisations. The paper focuses on a method for the application of hermeneutics and demonstrates, through analysing phenomenological interviews with leaders, that storytelling is an important strategic method of communication. Not only does the paper present insights on how storytelling is fundamental to leadership in the contemporary commercial hospitality industry it also reveals, through empirical research, how stories can be used as a data source

A reiterative method for calculating the early bactericidal activity of antituberculosis drugs.

Studies of early bactericidal activity (EBA) are important in the rapid evaluation of new antituberculosis drugs. Historically, these have concentrated on the log fall in the viable count in sputum during the first 48 hours of therapy. In this paper, we provide a mathematical model that suggests that the viable count in sputum follows an exponential decay curve with the equation V = S + Me(-kt) (where V is the viable count, M the population of bacteria susceptible to the test drug, S the population susceptible only to sterilizing agents, t the day of sputum collection as related to start of therapy, k the rate constant for the bacteria killed each day, and e the Napierian constant). We demonstrate that data from clinical trials fits the exponential decay model. We propose that future EBA studies should be performed by measuring daily quantitative counts for at least 5 days. We also propose that the comparison of the early bactericidal activity of antituberculosis drugs should be evaluated using the time taken to reduce the viable count by 50% (vt(50)). A further reiterative refinement following a rule set based on statistically the best fit to the exponential decay model is described that will allow investigators to identify anomalous results and thus enhance the accuracy in measuring early bactericidal activity

Analytical results for a Fokker-Planck equation in the small noise limit

We present analytical results for the lowest cumulants of a stochastic process described by a Fokker-Planck equation with nonlinear drift. We show that, in the limit of small fluctuations, the mean, the variance and the covariance of the process can be expressed in compact form with the help of the Lambert W function. As an application, we discuss the interplay of noise and nonlinearity far from equilibrium.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

1976 Experimental Summary

1. Cultivar Evaluation in High Rainfall Areas a) Midland B/Seaton Park/Yarloop/Larisa - 72MT29 b) Trikkala evaluation trial - 76MT3 2. Pasture deterioration - high rainfall areas. Variety Daliak. Dinninup. Woogenellup. Yarloop. Mt. Barker. Nangeela. Midland B. Toodyay C. Guildford D. Jarrahdale B. Trikkala. Larisa. a) Phytotron experiments. Dinn. x (Daliak x Tood. C) (av. of 6 crosses) Dinn. x (Mid. B x Nangeela) (av. of 3 crosses Daliak x (Mid. B x Nangeela) (av. of 4 crosses) b) Field experiments - 76MA8, 76DE3. 3. Lucerne productivity and persistence - 74E3-Sheep, 74E4-Cattle, 74E3-Sheep, 74E4-Cattle, 75AL30-Cattle. 4. Effects of saline irrigation water-on pasture production

Molecular Clock on a Neutral Network

The number of fixed mutations accumulated in an evolving population often displays a variance that is significantly larger than the mean (the overdispersed molecular clock). By examining a generic evolutionary process on a neutral network of high-fitness genotypes, we establish a formalism for computing all cumulants of the full probability distribution of accumulated mutations in terms of graph properties of the neutral network, and use the formalism to prove overdispersion of the molecular clock. We further show that significant overdispersion arises naturally in evolution when the neutral network is highly sparse, exhibits large global fluctuations in neutrality, and small local fluctuations in neutrality. The results are also relevant for elucidating the topological structure of a neutral network from empirical measurements of the substitution process.Comment: 10 page

Symmetry Relations for Trajectories of a Brownian Motor

A Brownian Motor is a nanoscale or molecular device that combines the effects of thermal noise, spatial or temporal asymmetry, and directionless input energy to drive directed motion. Because of the input energy, Brownian motors function away from thermodynamic equilibrium and concepts such as linear response theory, fluctuation dissipation relations, and detailed balance do not apply. The {\em generalized} fluctuation-dissipation relation, however, states that even under strongly thermodynamically non-equilibrium conditions the ratio of the probability of a transition to the probability of the time-reverse of that transition is the exponent of the change in the internal energy of the system due to the transition. Here, we derive an extension of the generalized fluctuation dissipation theorem for a Brownian motor for the ratio between the probability for the motor to take a forward step and the probability to take a backward step

Pasture deterioration - high rainfall areas

a. Pasture deterioration - High rainfall areas - A farm at Karridale (near Augusta) exhibiting classic pasture deterioration symptoms was closely monitored throughout 1974. This farm has paddocks ranging from relatively newly sown pastures with a high clover percentage, few weeds and high dry matter production (resown 1973 and 1974), through to extremely poor pastures with as little as 3 % clover and a weed component of over 80% (resown 1970 and 1971)... b. Midland B competition studies (69Mt19) -This grazing trial was sown in 1969 to plots of pure Midland B, pure Woogenellup and to three mixtures of the two cultivars. Part of the area was cropped in 1971 but has been grazed with the rest of the trial since then... c. Midland B/Seaton Park /Yarloop/39313Y grazing trial (72Mt29) - In a non-waterlogged environment at Mt. Barker both Seaton Park and Midland B have successfully competed with Yarloop under grazing. Seaton Park has outperformed Midland B with both dry matter production and plant establishment, while 39313Y (Larissa) has produced far more dry matter than Yarloop late in the season although plant counts are very similar... It is proposed to crop part of each plot during 1975. Regeneration of each variety after cropping will be measured for at least one season