Tourism carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis: a systematic literature review and a paradigm shift to a corporation-performance perspective

Since the introduction of the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis in the mid-1990s, the inverted U–shaped relationship between economic development and carbon emissions has remained a subject of debate in the social sciences. We engage tourism research in this debate, in a fourfold manner. First, we offer a systematic literature review concerning the role of tourism in the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis using a protocol-based reporting process. Second, we present the level of consensus with the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis and the conceptual gaps in the identified literature (n = 22). Third, we introduce an emerging concept, offering a novel tourism corporate/performance orientation to the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis. Fourth, we provide evidence of empirical validity using different econometric techniques from an international tourism corporation (n = 86) data set (2005–2018). The inverted U–shaped relationship between measures of economic and carbon performance among tourism corporations is a robust result under many different specifications

ILP Modulo Data

The vast quantity of data generated and captured every day has led to a pressing need for tools and processes to organize, analyze and interrelate this data. Automated reasoning and optimization tools with inherent support for data could enable advancements in a variety of contexts, from data-backed decision making to data-intensive scientific research. To this end, we introduce a decidable logic aimed at database analysis. Our logic extends quantifier-free Linear Integer Arithmetic with operators from Relational Algebra, like selection and cross product. We provide a scalable decision procedure that is based on the BC(T) architecture for ILP Modulo Theories. Our decision procedure makes use of database techniques. We also experimentally evaluate our approach, and discuss potential applications.Comment: FMCAD 2014 final version plus proof

The role of cloud-radiative effects and diabatic processes for the dynamics of the North Atlantic Oscillation on synoptic time-scales

Clouds shape weather and climate by regulating the latent and radiative heating in the atmosphere. Recent work demonstrated the importance of cloud-radiative effects (CRE) for the mean circulation of the extratropical atmosphere and its response to global warming. In contrast, little research has been done regarding the impact of CRE on internal variability. During the northern hemisphere winter the dominant mode of atmospheric variability over the North Atlantic and the surrounding continental areas of North America and Europe is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Here, we study how clouds and the NAO couple on synoptic time-scales during northern hemisphere winter via CRE within the atmosphere (ACRE) in observations and model simulations. A regression analysis based on 5-day-mean data from CloudSat/CALIPSO reveals a robust dipole of cloud-incidence anomalies during a positive NAO, with increased high-level clouds along the storm track (near 45°N) and the subpolar Atlantic, and decreased high-level clouds poleward and equatorward of it. Opposite changes occur for low-level cloud incidence. Satellite retrievals from CloudSat/CALIPSO, CERES and GERB as well as ERA-Interim short-term forecast data show that these cloud anomalies lead to an anomalous column-mean heating due to ACRE over the region of the Iceland low, and to a cooling over the region of the Azores high. To quantify the impact of the ACRE anomalies on the NAO, and to thereby test the hypothesis of a cloud-radiative feedback on the NAO persistence, we apply the surface pressure tendency equation (PTE) to ERA-Interim short-term forecast data. The NAO-related surface pressure tendency anomalies due to ACRE amplify the NAO-related surface pressure anomalies over the Azores high but have no area-averaged impact on the Iceland low. In contrast, surface pressure tendency anomalies due to total diabatic heating, including latent heating and clear-sky radiation, strongly amplify the NAO-related surface pressure anomalies over both the Azores high and the Iceland low, and their impact is much more spatially coherent. This suggests that while ACRE lead to an increase in NAO persistence on synoptic time-scales, their impact is relatively minor and much smaller compared to other diabatic processes. To test the robustness of our PTE-based hypothesis, numerical simulations in ICON are carried out. The PTE analysis in ICON shows results that are qualitatively consistent with the observational analysis, in particular regarding the feedback mechanisms of ACRE and total diabatic heating, which is dominated by latent heating. These PTE-based results are further tested by means of sensitivity simulations in ICON, where a NAO-related diabatic heating pattern is imposed either due to ACRE or total diabatic heating. These heating patterns are based on 5-day-mean NAO regressions of either ACRE or total diabatic heating. The sensitivity simulations confirm the observational hypothesis and show that ACRE feed back positively by up to 1–2% of 1σ NAO, while the total diabatic heating feeds back positively by up to 10% of 1σ NAO. Overall, the observational and modeling work both illustrate the substantial impact of the total diabatic heating for the NAO, while ACRE play a minor role. This highlights that diabatic processes are essential for understanding and accurately modeling the NAO short-term dynamics

Work Values Across Generations - A Study of the Greek Hotel Workforce

“There is a problem in the workplace…It is a problem of values, ambitions, views, mind-sets, demographics, and generations in conflict. The workplace you and we inhabit today is awash with the conflicting voices and views of the most age- and value-diverse workforce this country has known since our great-great-grandparents abandoned field and farm for factory and office” (Zemke, Raines & Filipczak, 2000, p. 9). The opening quotation encapsulates the popular belief among management practitioners that substantive and meaningful inter-generational differences exist in work values among the members of current workforce. Despite this practitioner interest and debate, systematic empirical research either to confirm or refute popular claims has, until recently, been lagging. Moreover, the few academic studies on this topic have largely focused on the US context and research from other countries, particularly non-English speaking, is scant. The aim of this study is to fill this vacuum by investigating the nature of work values across the prevalent generations of workers within the relatively unexplored cultural context of Greek hotel organisations. Building upon Schwartz’s (1994) theory of basic values and Vincent’s (2005) culture-specific approach of generational identity formation, this study proposes a values-based framework for studying generational differences in the workplace. The framework includes four types of work values namely extrinsic, intrinsic, prestige and social and three age-based generational groups; the Divided generation (1946-1966), the Metapolitefsi generation (1967-1981) and the Europeanised generation (1982-1996). The framework assumes that age-based generational identity is a culture specific phenomenon comprised of a distinctive set of values. The expectations and motivations towards work are shaped by this set of values, which emerged as a product of a living through experience from the successive entry into adulthood and endure as the members of each generation travelling through time together. In addition, generational boundaries are determined by revolutionary events that are contingent on the specific cultural context in which they became meaningful. The study assessed the concept of work values with a novel scale, designed to succinctly measure the four underlying work value types that were consistently observed in previous research. The proposed work values model was tested using a multiple triangulation approach with two samples and two methods of analysis across two studies. In study 1, the work values scores were collected by 303 workers in 7 year-round hotel establishments operated in the region of Macedonia and analysed with exploratory factor analysis. In study 2, the work values scores were collected by 304 workers in 7 seasonal hotel establishments from the same region and analysed with confirmatory factor analysis. The results of study 2 confirmed the outcome of study 1. More importantly, the analysis revealed that compared to theory driven alternatives, a second-order model, comprised of a general work values factor with four latent factors – intrinsic, material, power and affective work values, best fitted the data. This model helps to show how various types of work values fit together into a cohesive whole, allowing HR researchers and practitioners to identify broader patterns and trends in work values to improve HR interventions. Furthermore, multivariate analysis of variance among the entire sample (607 hotel workers) revealed significant generational differences in three types of work values (intrinsic, prestige and social), even when the effect of gender (male vs female) and operational pattern (seasonal vs year round) was taken into account. Some of the most complex challenges facing human resource professionals in contemporary organisations such as conflict, transferring of knowledge as well as retention of talents are often associated with these differences. Knowledge about the work values of each generation cohabiting current workplace can help organisations in creating practices that foster inter-generational synergies and comfort in the workplace. This in turn will allow them to narrow the social distance represented by the “generation gap”, an impediment to the effectiveness of even the most sophisticated human resource practices

Home – No Home: Expatriation, Social Integration and Remote Viewing of place. An Expanded Photography Approach

Home – No Home reflects through expanded photographic artworks and elucidate – through heuristic introspection, auto-ethnography, and critical text analysis – notions of expatriation and social integration, such as home, (Blunt & Dowling 2006; Blunt et al., 2007) home displacement and attachment, nostalgia (Vidler, 1992; Koerner, 2017) and homesickness (Fink et al., 2007). Attached to these concepts are deeper questions rooted in societal discourses about today’s global trends and discourses of expatriation, (Fechter, 2007; Leonard 2010; Walsh, 2010, 2012, 2014; Mathur, 2011; and Kunz, 2016) and the politics of border assertion and control. Is the ability to live abroad, in unfamiliar countries, a venture into pursuing present-day promised lands? If expatriation, or skilled-worker mobility, is a venture to paradises on earth, does it come without social and psychological baggage for the individual? Does repatriation (Chen & Morley, 2008) help in any way to alleviate them? In this paper, I consider these questions by offering a theoretical analysis of concepts such as home, home displacement and attachment, nostalgia, homesickness, self and its past and memory, along with creative work portraying them

Looking Back…There Is a Direction Home

The article offers a rereading of Scorsese’s “No Direction Home” (2005, 2016,). The film replaces D. A. Pennebaker’s famous cinema verité, observational documentary “Don’t Look Back” (1967) about Dylan’s 1965 tour in Great Britain, which has proved, as years have passed, to be insufficient to convey the full story of Dylan’s personality behind his artistry. The article’s purpose, however, is not to cross-analyze the latter two documentaries. Instead, it provides a closer analysis of “No Direction Home” and explains how and why Dylan appears more appropriately different in this 2005 to 2016 production, while revealing the Scorsese–Dylan connection and commenting on the film in two interrelated fields: cinematic and documentary. The focus is not on Dylan, but on Scorsese. Therefore, the article puts the spotlight back to the original source of the Dylan–Scorsese union in “No Direction Home” (2005, 2016) and on Scorsese’s signature documentary and the re-authoring practices first conceived in Woodstock (1970), “The Last Waltz” (1978), and “The Blues” (2003)

The Post Readymade Photographed Object

The Venus of Willendorf, a limestone figurine unearthed in 1908, has been considered one of the first found objects of our civilization. The Venus falls into the category “objects we find” and we consider as art, rather than in the category “found objects,” or “objets trouvés” in French, which has been associated with appropriating objects one finds and presenting them as readymade art. I argue in this article that in photography, especially on the eve of so-called post photography, the above terms converge and objects photographed can belong to both of the above categories. This is because their interpretation is heavily dependent on historical, ontological, and semantic information fueled by what I call “the dynamics of subject-object-viewer encounter.” The above dynamics constitute a discursive area which, following Chan, Luttingen, Gaskel-Thatcher, and Danto, addresses object materiality, utility, and function in society—viewers’ notions on object phenomenology and human visual perception. To test these arguments, I examine the properties of my portfolio “A World of Immaterial Objects, 2013–2019.” In doing so, I provide explicit details on my work processes, that is, how the transition of objects to photographs is realized and why. I then discuss the product of that process—the post readymade photographed object—and how its new immaterial version affects the dynamics of subject, object, and viewer encounter. Re-installing my hypotheses on the relationship between “objects we find,” “found objects,” and “objects photographed,” I re-join Chan and Luttingen and their notions on readymades, residual materialism, art, and thingness to draw comparisons to my notion of the post readymade photographed object. I foresee, after Gaskel and Thatcher, that post readymade photographed objects, in their immaterial versions as enchanted relics of our culture, will have a role to play in the writing of the history of our civilization