Talent Engagement Approaches and Competitiveness Among Five Star Hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya

The study sought to establish talent engagement approaches and competitiveness among five-star hotels in Nairobi city county, Kenya. Engagement is a heightened emotion and intellectual connection that talent has for their job, organisation, executives, or co-workers that influence them to apply additional discretionary effort to their work. Talent engagement is a challenge for many business organisations worldwide, as there is evidence that the number of employees giving full discretionary effort is falling. This has led to weak hospitality product diversification and differentiation in economies, including Kenya, which negatively impacts competitive advantage. The study adopted a quantitative research design. Respondents were talent and training executives upon whom structured questionnaires were administered. Data analysis was done using; descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation through Spearman’s Rank correlation and multiple linear regression analyses. A bivariate correlation between each approach of the talent engagement against competitiveness among five-star hotels in Nairobi City County revealed very weak and weak negative association except psychological contract. The results implied that hotels had not embraced talent engagement through an exclusive approach of talent management but through inclusive talent management which is basically human resources management. Multiple linear regressions analysis revealed that psychological contract was the most critical approach. The H0, ‘there is no significant relationship between talent engagement approaches adopted, and competitiveness of five–star hotels in Nairobi City County’ was rejected. Keywords: Talent Management, Talent, Engagement, Motivation, Commitment, and Competitiveness DOI: 10.7176/JTHS/54-04 Publication date: February 28th 202

Conceptualisation of Talent Management on Promotion of Competitiveness Among Five–Star Hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya

The study sought to explore the conceptualisation of talent management (TM) on promoting competitiveness among five–star hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya. There is a lack of unanimous conceptualisation of talent management. Organisations either lean to exclusive or inclusive conceptualisations. The exclusive approach has been touted as the source of competitive advantage; while the inclusive approach has been observed to lack the sharpness of influencing competitive advantage. Similarly, Kenya's hospitality industry faces TM challenges that impede it from acquiring, developing, and retaining high potentials, high performers, or talent with critical knowledge, skills, and abilities to create competitive advantage. There is insufficient literature about the nature of TM approach adopted in Kenya's hospitality industry and its relationship to competitive advantage. These aspects formed the basis of the cuurent study. Data analysis was done through thematic analysis with the help of the QSR NVivo 10 Analysis Package. Findings indicated that hotels did not have a unanimous definition of TM. This meant that TM was adopted differently across the hospitality industry in Kenya. Findings also revealed that approximately 58% of the five-star hotels in Nairobi City County conceptualised talent management based on the exclusive perspectives which TM researchers found to create competitive advantages for organisations. However, approximately 42% of the hotels that leaned towards an inclusive viewpoint were less likely to draw competitive benefits created by talent management. The majority of the informants who adopted the exclusive perspective approach of talent management indicated that they created competitive resources. In contrast, less than 50% of those that adopted an inclusive approach thought that talent management did not influence the competitiveness of the five-star hotels in Nairobi City County. Keywords: Talent management, Exclusive approach, Inclusive approach, and Competitiveness DOI: 10.7176/JTHS/54-03 Publication date: February 28th 202

Introduction to Community Service-Learning (SRCL 1000)

Introduction to Community Service-Learning is a general elective open to first to fourth year international and domestic students from a variety of disciplines across campus. Every fall and winter semester each student volunteers at one of 30 local not-for-profit organizations for a full semester. Students are required to complete 24 hours of service as part of their course work. In this poster session, 16 not-for-profit organizations will be represented by 27 SRCL 1000 students. They will demonstrate personal reflections on their service experiences, how their experiences connect to the course work and their organizations, and what they will take back to their own communities after the course is over. Students representing the following Kamloops not-for-profit organizations: Active Care Services: Nolan Fenrich St. John Ambulance: Damilola Abiyo and Ryuki Furuta Overlander Residential Care: Glory Amukamara Ponderosa Lodge: Rahab Kariuki The Kamloops Food Bank: Yu Cao, Surkamal Singh Jhand, Xiangzhong Kong and Ruotong Shi The ReStore – Habitat for Humanity: Dion Maborekhe, Fengyi Yang and Haonan Deng Kamloops Immigrant Services: Dipak Parmar Maple Leaf School: Qian Wang and Mengyao Zhu BC SPCA: Dawei Xu TRU Sustainability Office: Akash Ghosh, Takaya Hirose, Jihoon Kim and Kosuke Masunaga TRU Horticulture: Ols Buta TRU The X Radio: Marie Gabriela Jimenez and MD Majharul Islam Sabuj Beattie School of the Arts: Makoto Iida Gemstone Care Center: Tirth Panchal Chartwell Ridgepointe: Sakina Shikama Sikh Temple: Gurpreet Pua

Index-based agricultural insurance products: challenges, opportunities and prospects for uptake in sub-Sahara Africa

Agricultural insurance products have been piloted in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to address climate related risks faced by farmers. However, these products in general face low rates of adoption in SSA. Factors and challenges that may explain the low uptake of index-based insurance products in SSA are reviewed in this paper with the objective of assessing and documenting (i) the insurance products available to farmers, (ii) factors influencing farmers to purchase insurance products, (iii) challenges limiting farmers accessing to insurance products and (iv) opportunities that can positively enhance uptake in SSA. This review reveals that area yield index insurance, index-based crop insurance and index-based livestock insurance have been piloted or implemented in the region. The uptake of these products was found to be positively correlated with on-farm income/savings, literacy, and family size with estimated coefficients of 0.211, 0.292 and 0.018, respectively; and negatively correlated with premium rate (−0.183), age of farmer (−0.058), land tenure (−0.800) and farm size (−0.167). Challenges that impede uptake of index-based products include weakness of regulatory environment and financial facilities, basis risk, quality and availability of weather data, capacity building of stakeholders (farmer, insurer, and regulator), and lack of innovation for local adaptation and scalability. The current gap between high promise and low uptake calls for farmer-driven product design, strong public-private partnerships and improved quality and availability of weather data