Destination governance has emerged as a very important issue in local and regional development in Sweden. The article investigates the pattern in which local tourism governance operates based on a single case study of the ski resort of Hemavan and Tärnaby, and evaluates the effectiveness of this governance pattern on local tourism development according to a six-measurement criteria scale. A semi-structured interview approach with open-ended questions was used in this paper. Ten respondents were interviewed in Hemavan and Tärnaby, and they are representatives from both private and public sector. In the concluding section, the results are developed into an evaluation and analysis concerning how the characteristics of the local DMO matter in terms of its governance effectiveness. The results indicate that overall the DMO is an effective form by organizing various actors with mutual resource dependencies. However, the uneven balance of power between Tärnaby and Hemavan, as well as between various network participants, is hard to reconcile, which may strongly influence their governance effectiveness. / Managing Heritage Assets as Tourism Products - The case of the World Heritage of the Falun Copper Mine

No description available.

In this research the impact of board governance orientation and board processes on board role performance and board effectiveness is examined. Building on existing literature, a model that relates board governance orientation (agency, stakeholder, stewardship and resource dependency) and board processes (cohesiveness, cognitive conflict, affective conflict, communication quality, effort norms, trust and the use of knowledge & skills) to board effectiveness via three mediating variables, board control role, board service role, and board strategy role is developed. The model was tested through a survey of listed companies in the UK. The results are based on 74 companies. The findings show (a) the board undertakes two distinct roles, control and service; (b) process variables, most notably cognitive conflict and the use of knowledge & skills, significantly influence board effectiveness mediated by the board’s control and/or service role; (c) structural variables, specifically the proportion of outsiders on the board, impacts on the board control role; (d) understanding board effectiveness requires a multitheoretic perspective.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The present research examined how individuals’ cultural orientations influenced the relationship between their construal level and temporal distance. There were two studies in this research. Study 1 was composed of two parts. In the first part, the relationship between culture and construal level was examined through the Behavioral Identification Form (BIF). In the second part, the influence of culture on temporal distance and individuals’ construal level was investigated by analyzing participants’ descriptions of their lives. In study 2, the three-way interaction between culture, temporal distance, and the construal-level frame of persuasive messages (desirability vs. feasibility focused message) was investigated. A total of 200 students from two different countries (Korea and the U.S.) participated in the study. A fictitious brand and advertisement were created to examine the interaction. The findings revealed that individuals from an individualistic culture (U.S.) prefer abstract thinking to concrete thinking and focus more on the desirability than the feasibility of an event or object. And the reverse was true for individuals from a collectivistic culture (Korea). When individuals are in a proximal temporal condition, those from a collectivistic culture have a more proximal temporal perspective, and they are more likely to represent the future event in low-level terms. In contrast, individuals from an individualistic culture have a more distal temporal perspective and tend to represent the future event in high-level terms. Consistent results were found in an advertising context. When individuals from a collectivistic culture were in a proximal temporal condition, they tended to show a more favorable attitude toward the advertisement emphasizing the feasibility features of the product. The reverse was true for individuals from an individualistic culture. / text

The purpose of this research is to identify how uncertainty in fire safety system effectiveness should be considered in a new risk-informed design fire tool, B-RISK. Specific objectives were to collect the available data on fire safety system effectiveness from the literature, investigate methods to improve fire safety system effectiveness data collection, develop the risk-informed design fire tool to propagate the uncertainties, and recommend methods to rank the sources of uncertainty for fire safety system effectiveness for appropriate model selection. The scope of the research is limited to the effects of systems on fire development and smoke spread and does not include the effects of the fire on systems (such as loss of structural integrity) or interactions with occupants. Sprinkler effectiveness data from recent New Zealand Fire Service data is included with a discussion of the uncertainty in this type of data and recommendations for improving data collection. The ability of the model to predict multiple sprinkler activations is developed in conjunction with a hydraulic submodel in B-RISK to include water supply pressure effects on sprinkler effectiveness. A new method of collecting reliability data on passive fire protection elements such as doors was developed. Data collected on the probability for doors in shared means of escape to be open and the time doors are open during occupant evacuation using this method is presented. Available data on smoke management system effectiveness is listed, along with a discussion of why there is more uncertainty associated with these systems compared with sprinkler systems. The capabilities of B-RISK for considering fire safety system effectiveness are demonstrated using Australasian case studies.

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This dissertation explores and examines various foundations for thinking about organizational systems, i.e., organizational epistemics. There are several ways to examine "systems" and several levels at which criteria apply to systems. First, the study establishes the minimum demands on "systems" and formulates what is essentially a system for systems or an organizational system for selecting organizations' designs. By adopting a generic model, one that stipulates minimum requirements for assessing organizational designs, each administrative organization is evaluated in terms of the theoretical justification used to ensure an effective and efficient organizational structure. The future effectiveness of organizational designs is contingent on changes in society, in education, and in the private sector, e.g., responses to social, economic, and cultural exigencies. This dissertation explores possibilities for the future as organizations respond to new and unusual variables. The format suggested in this study may well provide a glimpse of what the future holds for organizational designs in the world of tomorrow.