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Mexican migration to the United States is not a new phenomenon, but through increased globalization, labor migration became more flexible and more common. With the rise in migration flows, remittances also experienced a considerable growth. For a long time, these large flows of money have been mostly disregarded. Today they are one of the largest financial flows to developing countries. Therefore, in the last years, more and more research on this topic popped up. Remittance flows are considered to be relatively stable. In the case of Mexico, they seem to behave in a countercyclical way and are ra-ther compensatory than opportunistic in nature. Their mostly altruistic motivation and the end use of remittances influences the economic and social impacts they have on the overall country. There are several channels through which remittances may directly or indirectly impact economic development. In literature, there are primarily two extreme positions present. The positive approach is that remittances enhance investment in physical and human capital, thus promote economic growth. Remittances are considered to have a positive impact on Mexico´s overall financial development and capital accumulation. Further-more, the balancing effect on the balance of payments is positive, since trade deficits can be counterbalanced through the entry of foreign currency. In contrast, advocators of the negative approach say that remittances seem not to have an overall positive impact on economic growth, because their negative impacts outstrip the positive ones. A real exchange rate appreciation caused by remittances that lead to a less competitive tradable sector (Dutch disease effect) is one of the main negative effects associated with remit-tance flows. Furthermore, remittances are considered to cause moral hazard problems, which lead recipients to neglect labor market efforts and spend more time on leisure. Moreover, remittances are predominantly used for consumption rather than for produc-tive investment, thus not promoting long-run economic growth. Concerning the social impacts, scientists agree on the positive effect remittances have on poverty reduction. In contrast, remittances seem to have an equalizing effect on in-come distribution in regions with long migration history. But, non-migration seems to equalize income distribution even more. The difficulty is to benefit the most from remittances´ positive impacts and to reduce their negative consequences in order to ensure their developmental effect.

In the globalized world of today a well-elaborated, long-term oriented nation branding strategy which includes the government, the public and the private sector as well as the nation´s citizens themselves can help nations to improve and to better control their nation image. Nation branding activities increase the countries´ competitiveness in the global marketplace and help to foster the tourism arrivals, inward foreign direct investment flows and exports as well as they help to attract talented workforce and students. Despite its growing importance, most Latin American countries still have not engaged enough in the area of nation branding and mostly only focus their activities on the tourism promotion. The region´s countries have a good image regarding soft factors such as their people and tourism attractions but have a weak image regarding their products, services and investment opportunities. Brazil has a relatively good nation image in many dimensions but still has not developed an extensive nation branding strategy. Chile and Colombia are among the Latin American countries which have started to conduct more complete and advanced nation branding activities. Although such advances can be observed, there is still a lot of improvement potential in the nation branding practices of Latin American countries.

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pakilia, a start-up with a social mission, was founded recently by students of ESB Reut-lingen and Universidad de las Américas Puebla. The company exports handmade silver jewelry from Mexico to Germany and distributes it to German customers thereby sup-porting artisan families in the mountain village Taxco in Mexico, where the jewelry is produced. Founded in Summer 2012, there has not yet been a business plan to improve organization and for strategy formulation. The work at hand elaborates an extended business plan for the company based on a careful evaluation of background infor-mation.

Kanndas S.A. de C.V. is a company operating in the renewable energy market in Puebla, Mexico, for which a communication strategy has been developed. The main challenges for the company are to be found, on one hand, within its own potential market, as there is a lack of knowledge about the photovoltaic technology as well as a restrained attitude towards mid- to long-term investments. On the other hand, Kanndas´ main competitor is the Mexican tariff system itself, which unsustainably subsidizes electricity tariffs as well as the lack of governmental promotion of renewable energy investments in general. In order to increase the efficiency of Kanndas´ communicational efforts, an integrated promotional campaign, mainly based on direct marketing efforts, reinforcing word-of-mouth publicity among (potential) customers, combined with targeted public relations activities has been developed. The objectives of the promotional campaign are, in a first stage, to create conviction about the investment/technology among carefully selected decisions makers of specific niche markets. The second stage of the campaign tries to move those persons to a final investment decision. The selling premise of the campaign is Kanndas´ price competitiveness, its main competitive edge. The communication strategy of the campaign is mainly supported by event concepts.

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This research explores the destination collaboration and stakeholder engagement in the context of conventions industry. The research aims at providing understanding how destinations are able to achieve successful stakeholder engagement. The research topic is explored from the structure, engagement approach, activities, capabilities and behavior perspective. Collaboration, alliance and stakeholder engagement literature is studied to form a theoretical base for the research. This research is qualitative multiple-case study. It allows probing deeply in to attitudes and specific instances of the phenomenon. It enables to compare the studied cases. The study is explanatory in nature, which attempt to find explanations for certain phenomenon. Three case meeting destinations; a Finnish city Tampere, two Swedish cities Jönköping and Gothenburg were the units of analysis. To provide more holistic view of collaborative structures, five European cities Glasgow, Vienna, Helsinki, Espoo and Troms where additionally explored. The phenomena were viewed from the convention bureau executives’ perspective. The importance of collaboration is highly appreciated in all destinations. Collaboration is the core of bureaus existence. The motivation factors for collaboration relate to destination learning, transaction cost and to destination strategy. The promotion of meetings marketing is most commonly centralized to a destination marketing organization (DMO), which is responsible for the entire destination marketing. The convention bureau (CB) is still the entity, which facilitates the stakeholder collaboration and engages the meeting destination stakeholders. A bureau is typically a part of a DMO. Formal alliance mode basing on public-private platform is an appreciated collaboration format. The identification of stakeholders strongly relate to engagement approach and activities debate. This research identified four most salient stakeholder groups CBs to engage; critical friends, weak friends, quiet competitors and aggressive competitors. It is important to engage various stakeholder groups differently. Critical friends, which consist of CB members, are the most important group to manage. A university is suggested to belong to critical category, contrary to previous suggestion. The local university and other than obvious stakeholders have an important role for CBs (suppliers), and the members’ engagement is active. The activities relate to events where the CB and stakeholders are able to communicate. Identifying and engaging the non-supportive, competitive stakeholders’ shows positive influence. Transparency, trust and ability to learn showed to relate to successful engagement. The contributions of this research can be utilized to guide destination executives in designing and planning of destination development and marketing. One needs to realize that the stakeholder engagement is an extensive phenomenon. This research was limited to explore the engagement from the chosen perspectives. The findings in this study however are not exhaustive and recalls for further research. Although the similar findings, the overall generalizability of the findings requires further testing.

Mei-Li Li. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: leaves 129-131.