What Matters to Americans: Social, Political and Economic Values

Societies are complex entities with competing and conflicting and supporting and reinforcing characteristics. This study, part of a multiyear project sponsored by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in conjunction with the University of Technology, Sydney and Melbourne Business School, seeks to chart the social, economic and political preferences of society, using a unique methodology that provides us with a more accurate and robust picture of how individuals, as citizens, make fundamental trade-offs about things of material interest to their society. The study was conducted in the United States of America with more than 2,800 participants, chosen to match the profile of the voting age population. Similar studies were conducted in the UK, Australia and Germany, providing data on more than 9,000 individuals.1 Examined were 16 categories of general social, economic and political issues that ranged from the local (for example, crime and public safety) to the global (for example, global security) along with 113 sub-issues that also varied from the local (for example, public transport and children’s schooling) to the global (for example, nuclear nonproliferation and third world debt). This information was linked to data on the population’s religious and political activities, its general demographics, and donating and volunteering activities with civil society organizations

What Matters to Australians: Our Social, Political and Economic Values

Societies are complex entities with competing and conflicting and supporting and reinforcing characteristics. This study, part of a multiyear project sponsored by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in conjunction with the University of Technology, Sydney and Melbourne Business School, seeks to chart the social, economic and political preferences of our society using a unique methodology that provides us with a more accurate and robust picture of how we, as citizens, make fundamental trade-offs about things of material interest to our society. The study was conducted in Australia with more than 1,500 participants chosen to match the profile of the voting age population. Similar studies were conducted in the UK, USA and Germany. Examined were 16 categories of general social, economic and political issues that ranged from the local (e.g., crime & public safety) to the global (e.g., global security) along with 113 subissues that also varied from the local (e.g., public transport and children’s schooling) to the global (e.g., nuclear non-proliferation and third world debt). This information was linked to information on the population’s religious and political activities, its general demographics, and donating and volunteering activities with civil society organisations

What Matters to Citizens of the United Kingdom: Social, Political and Economic Values

Societies are complex entities with competing and conflicting and supporting and reinforcing characteristics. This study, part of a multiyear project sponsored by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in conjunction with the University of Technology, Sydney and Melbourne Business School, seeks to chart the social, economic and political preferences of society using a unique methodology that provides us with a more accurate and robust picture of how individuals, as citizens, make fundamental trade-offs about things of material interest to their society. The study was conducted in the United Kingdom with nearly 1,700 participants, chosen to match the profile of the voting age population. Similar studies were conducted in Australia, the USA and Germany. Examined were 16 categories of general social, economic and political issues that ranged from the local (for example, crime and public safety) to the global (for example, global security) along with 113 sub-issues that also varied from the local (for example, public transport and children’s schooling) to the global (for example, nuclear non-proliferation and third world debt). This information was linked to data on the population’s religious and political activities, its general demographics, and donating and volunteering activities with civil society organisations

Formative versus reflective measurement models: Two applications of formative measurement

This paper presents a framework that helps researchers to design and validate both formative and reflective measurement models. The framework draws from the existing literature and includes both theoretical and empirical considerations. Two important examples, one from international business and one from marketing, illustrate the use of the framework. Both examples concern constructs that are fundamental to theory-building in these disciplines, and constructs that most scholars measure reflectively. In contrast, applying the framework suggests that a formative measurement model may be more appropriate. These results reinforce the need for all researchers to justify, both theoretically and empirically, their choice of measurement model. Use of an incorrect measurement model undermines the content validity of constructs, misrepresents the structural relationships between them, and ultimately lowers the usefulness of management theories for business researchers and practitioners. The main contribution of this paper is to question the unthinking assumption of reflective measurement seen in much of the business literature

Tourism discretionary spending choice behaviour

Studies of tourism demand are numerous. But studies of how consumers apportion discretionary resources to tourism and across other competing categories of discretionary expenditure are non-existent. Therefore, how individuals and households make trade-offs between, or assess the respective utilities of, the various categories of discretionary expenditure and allocate discretionary financial resources, appears to be unknown. This study seeks to address this need by examining discretionary expenditure through choice experiments. The data provide insights into how each type of discretionary expenditure is valued and how each type competes for a share of the discretionary expenditure ‘pie’. We discuss the results with an emphasis on the implications for tourism marketing

New horses for old courses - questioning the limitations of sustainable tourism to supply-driven measures and the nature-based context

It seems a general belief that (1) sustainable tourism is supply-driven, and (2) sustainable tourists are visitors engaging in nature-based travel activities. Results reported in this paper challenge these assumptions. Findings from an online survey indicate that nature-based travel is not solely related to environmentally protective attitudes. Market-driven mechanisms could therefore be used to strengthen ecological sustainable tourism. Only 39 % of respondents classified as ‘Ecologically Caring Tourists’ stated that an intense experience of nature is a motivation for their vacation travel behaviour. The findings indicate two possible directions for the strengthening of sustainable tourism measures: (1) demand-driven mechanisms could be used in addition to supply-side measures to identify and attract groups of tourists with a smaller ecological footprint; (2) the tourism market suitable to increase ecological sustainability is likely to be much larger than assumed by focusing on nature-based tourism only. These findings could be of great benefit to any tourism destination in terms of the development of new tools and the identification of new tourism contexts for managing ecological sustainability

Containing the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome in external knowledge absorption and open innovation: The role of indirect countermeasures

This paper builds new theory and provides supporting evidence to contain the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome (NIHS) – a persistent decision-making error arising from an attitude-based bias against external knowledge. Conceptually, we draw on the 4i framework of organizational learning to develop a novel process perspective on NIHS. This allows us not only to unpack how and where NIHS impedes organizational learning, but also to identify the key requirements for effective NIHS countermeasures. Importantly, countermeasures fall into two categories: those that seek to change the negative attitude directly (direct NIHS countermeasures) and those that seek to attenuate the behavioral impact of negative attitudes without addressing the attitudes as such (indirect NIHS countermeasures). While the evidence base on direct NIHS countermeasures has grown over the last decade, indirect NIHS countermeasures have received little research attention. To address this gap, we adopt a mixed methods research design composed of two complementary empirical studies – the first qualitative and the second quantitative. Study 1 explores the prevalence of distinct NIHS countermeasures in collaborative R&D practice. Based on 32 interviews and three focus group meetings with R&D employees, we find that a broad array of primarily direct NIHS countermeasures is employed in R&D practice. Study 2 addresses the scarcity of scholarly and managerial insights on indirect NIHS countermeasures by testing the effectiveness of perspective taking as a debiasing technique to contain negative attitudes at the level of the individual. Based on quantitative survey data from 565 global R&D projects, it provides empirical evidence not only for the prevalence and negative effects of NIHS on project success as mediated by external knowledge absorption, but also for the effectiveness of perspective taking as an exemplary indirect NIHS countermeasure