Hospitality: a social lens follows on from the unique contribution made by In Search of Hospitality: theoretical perspectives and debates. It progresses debate, challenges the boundaries of ways of knowing hospitality, and offers intellectual insights stimulated by the study of hospitality.
The contributing authors provide tangible evidence of continuing advancement and development of knowledge pertaining to the phenomenon of hospitality. They draw on the richness of the social sciences, taking host and guest relations as a means of studying in-group and out-group relations with and between societies. The chapter contributors represent a multi-disciplinary, international grouping of leading academics with expertise in hospitality management and education, human resource management, linguistics, modern languages, gastronomy, history, human geography, art, architecture, anthropology, and sociology. Each lends their expertise to apply as a social lens through which to view, analyse, and explore hospitality within a range of contexts. Through this process novel ways of interpreting, knowing and sense-making emerge that are captured in the final chapter of the book, and have informed future research themes which are explored.
*Promotes debate, challenges boundaries and offers insights into the study of hospitality
*Muli-disciplinary and international contributors
*An excellent reference for researchers interested in the sociology within the hospitality and tourism industries

Education Matters presents in one volume many of Alan B. Krueger's contributions to the economics of education. This invaluable collection of papers, based on his groundbreaking research from the 1990s, has been published in a wide range of professional outlets and has influenced public policy and research in the US and throughout the world. The book opens with an introductory essay explaining the importance of the study of the economics of education as well as providing an overview of the book. The author then goes on to discuss and analyse the important topics in the economics of education, including the economic pay off from attending school for longer, the return to investments in school resources, causes of the increased pay off to education, the contribution of education to economic growth, and racial differences in school quality and their consequences. The final chapter provides a framework for evaluating schools. This fascinating collection of work, from a writer at the forefront of economics and educational research, will be warmly welcomed by academics in the areas of human capital, economics and public policy, as well as by educational policymakers.

Major challenges for life insurance companies have been posed by an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions in the insurance industry and the emergence of non-traditional competitors such as banks, mutual fund companies and investment advisory firms. This is the first book to analyze the determinants of firm performance in the life insurance industry by identifying the best practices' employed by leading insurers to succeed in this dynamic business environment. The book draws upon data from insurer financial statements as well as upon an extensive survey of life insurer management practices and strategic choices in distribution systems, information technology, mergers and acquisitions, human resources and financial strategies. Generic strategies such as cost leadership, customer focus, and product differentiation are analyzed as well as strategic practices specific to the insurance industry. Best practices are identified by measuring the economic efficiency of insurers and by comparing firms across the industry. Both cost and revenue efficiency are measured relative to best practice efficient frontiers consisting of the industry's dominant life insurance firms. Economies of scale and the effects of mergers and acquisitions on efficiency are also analyzed. Financial strategies are examined with specific reference to pricing policy, valuation of assets and liabilities, and the current state of firm-level risk management systems. The benchmarks established are the result of extensive fieldwork that identifies key financial risks and methodologies to both measure and manage them at the firm level. The results discussed in the book indicate that firm performance is significantly correlated with management practices and strategic choices. Thus, life insurers can improve profitability by adopting optimal combinations of strategies. The book contains important new material on the effects of strategic choices in product distribution systems, information technology, mergers and acquisitions, human resources, and financial risk management policies. In the area of efficiency, the methodology provides a new approach for identifying peer groups of insurers and measuring the performance of individual insurers relative to their peer group. On the topics of risk and pricing, new insights are offered relative to current methodologies and in regard to areas where improvement is clearly warranted. The book concludes with an analysis of the future opportunities and challenges in the life insurance industry facing managers, and the strategic options available to them to cope with these changes.

Countries establish defence industries for various reasons. Chief among these are usually a concern with national security, and a desire to be as independent as possible in the supply of the armaments which they believe they need. But defence industries are different from most other industries. Their customer is governments. Their product is intended to safeguard the most vital interests of the state. The effectiveness of these products (in the real, rather than the experimental sense) is not normally tested at the time of purchase. If, or when, it is tested, many other factors (such as the quality of political and military leadership) enter into the equation, so complicating judgments about the quality of the armaments, and about the reliability of the promises made by the manufacturers. All of these features make the defence sector an unusually political industrial sector. This has been true in both the command economies of the former Soviet Union and its satellites, and in the market or mixed economies of the west. In both cases, to speak only a little over-generally, the defence sector has been particularly privileged and particularly protected from the usual economic vicissitudes. In both cases, too, its centrality to the perceived vital interests of the state has given it an unusual degree of political access and support.

This book provides a holistic analysis of South Korea's strategic use of mega-events in its modern development. It examines the Summer Olympics (1988), the World Expo (1993), the FIFA World Cup (2002), and the Winter Olympics (2018) over the past 30 years of the country's rapid growth, and across varying stages of economic and political development. It explains how mega-events helped to secure South Korea's position on the international stage, boost nationalism, propel economic growth in export-oriented national companies, and build cities that accommodate - as well as represent - South Korea's progress. It thereby highlights the broader implications for today's global phenomenon of increasing reliance on mega-events as a catalyst for development, while the criticism that mega-events do more harm than good proliferates. The book is ideal for academics, policymakers, and those with an interest in mega-events and their role in the development of non-western countries.

Graduates undertaking the RICS Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) often find that, in addition to the general information provided by the RICS, guidance is needed on specific areas of their work as general practice surveyors. How to Pass the APC: Essential Advice for General Practice Surveyors has been built around the needs of general practice surveyors, and guides you through the APC process in line with your own competencies - including valuation, marketing, landlord and tenant, estate management, rating, and planning and development work, together with more specialist areas. The author highlights the essentials, showing you how to approach the presentation and interview, providing a bank of examples of real APC questions, together with illustrative responses to demonstrate how the interview process works. Accessible and easy to use, this book gives you comprehensive coverage of the fundamental elements and is a must read for anyone taking the APC.

In today's knowledge-based economy, service professionals, such as consultants, lawyers, accountants, architects, advertising agencies, IT specialists, and financial advisors, face a dazzling array of opportunities and challenges. In order to compete effectively, they need a disciplined approach for detecting market shifts, harnessing their competitive advantages, and developing service offerings that will attract the most profitable clients. Drawing from a five-year study covering thousands of firms, Suzanne Lowe presents the three building blocks of a market-driven infrastructure--looking out, digging deeper, and embedding innovation--and identifies eleven core skills that any service firm can apply to master the marketplace and achieve lasting competitive success. Integrating insights from the fields of marketing, service management, planning, and entrepreneurship, and showcasing the successful strategies of such firms as Towers Perrin, DDB Worldwide, and Egon Zehnder International, Lowe shows service professionals how to gather intelligence about their clients, competitors, and marketplace; promote a market-driven culture throughout the organization; and engage in continuous research and development to introduce new services. Mastering these skills will enable readers to be better prepared to face changes in the market, and make decisive, informed decisions about opportunities that will prove right in the long term.

"Service Design and Delivery" provides a comprehensive overview of the increasingly important role played by the service industry. Focusing on the development of different processes employed by service organizations, the book emphasizes management of service in relation to products. It not only explores the complexity of this relationship, but also introduces strategies used in the design and management of service across various sectors, highlighting where tools, techniques and processes applicable to one sector may prove useful in another. The implementation methods introduced in the book also illustrate how and why companies can transform themselves into service organizations.

While the book is primarily intended as a text for advanced-level courses in service design and delivery, it also contains theoretical and practical knowledge beneficial to both practitioners in the service sector and those in manufacturing contemplating moving towards service delivery.

'Empowerment: HR strategies for service excellence' shows managers and students the importance of empowerment as part of human resource strategy. It provides a critical perspective of this established vital management technique, identifying factors that will lead to a win: win situation for all concerned.
When successfully incorporated as part of HR strategy, empowerment can:
* enable organizations to gain commercial and competitive advantage
* become more flexible
* improve employee commitment
* use the skills of individual employees to best advantage and enhance personal capabilities.
'Empowerment: HR strategies for service excellence' uses case studies from companies such as McDonalds, TGI Fridays and Harvester Restaurants to build a picture of empowerment of service employees in context, illustrating how different forms of empowerment are employed and different working arrangements are practiced.
A well-established and proven management technique
Empowerment as a vital part of HR Strategy
International industry case studies

First published in 2000. Over the past two decades, the service sector have increased dramatically and now occupy the largest share of the economy of advanced industrial societies. Certain business services are regularly cited as evidence for the emergence of a "knowledge economy". In this pioneering book, leading researchers in the fields of service industries and innovation studies investigate the reasons for the growth of the service sectors and this emergent knowledge economy. Drawing on material as diverse as macroeconomic statistics and firm-level case studies, the contributors demonstrate that services are often important innovators in their own right, as well as contributing to innovation and economic performance in their user industries. The question of how far services are special cases, and what specific processes and trajectories characterize their innovative activity is treated systematically. Additionally, a variety of original analyses and information resources are presented. This book should be of value to the student of the modern industrial society, to those seeking to forge policies appropriate to the new context of economic development, and to researchers who are confronting the challenges of the knowledge economy.

This book demonstrates how to successfully manage and lead healthcare institutions by employing the logic of business model innovation to gain competitive advantages. Since clerk-like routines in professional organizations tend to overlook patient and service-centered healthcare solutions, it challenges the view that competition and collaboration in the healthcare sector should not only incorporate single-end services, therapies or diagnosis related groups. Moreover, the authors focus on holistic business models, which place greater emphasis on customer needs and put customers and patients first. The holistic business models approach addresses topics such as business operations, competitiveness, strategic business objectives, opportunities and threats, critical success factors and key performance indicators.The contributions cover various aspects of service business innovation such as reconfiguring the hospital business model in healthcare delivery, essential characteristics of service business model innovation in healthcare, guided business modeling and analysis for business professionals, patient-driven service delivery models in healthcare, and continuous and co-creative business model creation. All of the contributions introduce business models and strategies, process innovations, and toolkits that can be applied at the managerial level, ensuring the book will be of interest to healthcare professionals, hospital managers and consultants, as well as scholars, whose focus is on improving value-generating and competitive business architectures in the healthcare sector.

'Public House & Beverage Management' provides students with a practical guide to the management aspects of the licensed trade industry. 'Public House & Beverage Management' introduces students to: * Key players * Variations in service offer * Types of management arrangement (managed, leased, tenanted, franchise, freehouse) * Customers and segments * Labour markets and employees * Key elements in the business units * Retailing skills. The combined experiences of the authors are reflected in the text, as between them they have a vast range of experience as: publican, hotelier, chef and sommelier. Enhanced by this is their teaching and research covering food service, cellar management, marketing and wines and spirit education.

Tourism Reassessed: Blight or blessing? provides a balanced assessment of the effects of tourism on 20th century life and evaluates its significance in international relations. Inspired by Sir George Young's book, Tourism: Blessing or blight?, published 25 years ago, this book places tourism firmly within its wider context. Tourism Reassessed sees tourism as: * A factor of international relations * A facet of the global economic order It takes a new approach by examining the place of tourism in the global political economy, analysing both how far it is shaped by the political-economic system and its own role in shaping that system. Tourism Reassessed is ideal for educators and researchers in tourism and all those studying or interested in the subject. Policy makers in governments and international and national organizations in tourism and related fields will find this essential reading.

This book is compilation of different analytics and machine learning techniques focusing on the tourism industry, particularly in measuring the impact of COVID-19 as well as forging a path ahead toward recovery. It includes case studies on COVID-19's effects on tourism in Europe, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore with the objective of looking at the issues through a data analytical lens and uncovering potential solutions. It adopts descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, machine learning predictive models, and some simulation models to provide holistic understanding. There are three ways in which readers will benefit from reading this work. Firstly, readers gain an insightful understanding of how tourism is impacted by different factors, its intermingled relationship with macro and business data, and how different analytics approaches can be used to visualize the issues, scenarios, and resolutions. Secondly, readers learn to pick up data analytics skills from the illustrated examples. Thirdly, readers learn the basics of Python programming to work with the different kinds of datasets that may be applicable to the tourism industry.