Relocating empowerment as a management concept for Asia

Management theories, especially those in the area of human resource management, are predominantly Western-centric in origin and in the empirical testing that underpins them. The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of one such theory, employee empowerment, in an Asian context. Information gathered from an open ended questionnaire and focus groups provide an in-depth examination of hotel managers' perceptions and practice of empowerment in the workplace. This study provides tentative indicators of significant culturally-driven differences in the understanding and application of employee empowerment (in terms of both research and practice) between Western and Asian contexts. The results of this study indicate that empowerment in Asian cultures relates much more to the individual and his/her merits, in contrast to organizationally-driven empowerment in Western countries. The findings also indicate that empowerment by hotel managers is related to the level of personal trust the manager has in an employee

News from the motherland: a content analysis of existential tourism magazines in Southern China

Ethnic Chinese who reside outside of mainland China proper constitute an enormous opportunity for tourism and economic development in China (Lew & Wong, 2003). Overseas Chinese have a strong sense of common origin, based on both racial and cultural grounds, which are further enhanced by business, social, and familial ties. These ties often take the form of existential tourism, which Cohen (1979) defined as travel back to a personal or spiritual “center” located away from one's home. This article presents the results of a content analysis of publications from Guangdong Province in China for ethnic Chinese residing outside of China. The content analysis results indicated that very strong existential tourism ties exist between Guangdong Province and the US and Canada in North America, and to adjacent Hong Kong and Macau. Examples of efforts to strengthen common origins included 56 articles on biographies of overseas Chinese individuals and 24 articles on overseas Chinese society and culture (out of 176 articles examined). Other major topics included efforts to build networks and investments, domestic news articles, donation story articles, education-related articles, investment-related articles, and articles on activities of local overseas Chinese Affairs Offices. Stories of rootfinding visits and the theme of “Love of -Country” were also prominent. These magazines indicated how local overseas Chinese Affairs Offices are proactive in strengthening ties with overseas Chinese through travel and tourism, upon which social and then business networks can be established

A High-Low Model of Daily Stock Price Ranges

We observe that daily highs and lows of stock prices do not diverge over time and, hence, adopt the cointegration concept and the related vector error correction model (VECM) to model the daily high, the daily low, and the associated daily range data. The in-sample results attest the importance of incorporating high-low interactions in modeling the range variable. In evaluating the out-of-sample forecast performance using both mean-squared forecast error and direction of change criteria, it is found that the VECM-based low and high forecasts offer some advantages over some alternative forecasts. The VECM-based range forecasts, on the other hand, do not always dominate –the forecast rankings depend on the choice of evaluation criterion and the variables being forecasted.daily high, daily low, VECM model, forecast performance, implied volatility

Urban Gardening Realities: The Example Case Study of Portsmouth, England

This paper offers an empirical case study of the potential for urban gardening to contribute to individual food security. Food security generally encompasses both availability and accessibility. In Western Europe, availability per se has declined in importance with the development of national and international transportation networks. During the past decade, urban gardening has gained political currency as a strategy to provide greater food security at the local level. However, prevailing economic and social structures hamper the likelihood that urban gardening might offer much greater food security. Realistically, contemporary urban gardening most closely resembles a middle-class pursuit for personal enjoyment

Farm-to-Fork: A Proposed Revision of the Classical Food Miles Concept

The “Food Miles” concept was introduced in the UK nearly two decades ago in order to highlight the emissions of CO2 that arise during the transportation of food grown in distant locations. The concept has subsequently energized urban citizens to re-consider the on-purpose purchase of locally grown foods. The important contribution of CO2 emitted in heated greenhouse operations has heretofore been routinely omitted from the “Food Miles” accounting protocol. In the analysis of tomato supply to Vancouver, the CO2 emission was estimated to be about 7 times higher for tomatoes grown in local greenhouses than in local open fields