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This chapter is a retrospective commentary on the efficacy of teaching and learning in a higher education space that embraces the incredible diversity of delivery modes available in the post-Covid-19 era of “Smart Cities.” The current reality of widespread and leading-edge experimentation with online learning necessitates that existing brick-and-mortar institutions reimagine their places as providers of higher education in this new age of digital disruptions that will resonate with all stakeholders a future of endless possibilities. The authors, with four decades between them of practice and field research at leading universities and colleges in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and UAE, advocate an approach to higher education that is personalized for learning effectiveness, industrial operations, and institutional evolution; that is, a higher education that is democratized. They warn that the wasted opportunities of meaningful digital transformation pre-Covid-19 have led to an urgency of transformation at the present time. While randomized control trials continue to be the “elephant in the room”; scholars, leaders, technocrats, and regulators must drive the quest for the growth and relevance of a diversified and learner-driven higher education in the years ahead. The platform of a “smart city” may just be the catalyst for such a radical innovation.

Management discretion in the decision to reduce payroll costs is an important but under-researched issue in management accounting. The authors leverage the experimental environment to test the role of organizational culture (close vs. distant) and managerial communion (concern for others) along with their interaction with sales decline persistence (one vs. two periods) on planned layoff decisions. The authors find that communal managers are hesitant to downsize employees and that a close organizational culture interacts with one period sales declines to reduce layoffs although the influence of culture is reduced with persistent sales declines. The authors also examine the influence of culture and communion on managers’ preference for pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs. The authors find that a close culture and higher communion are associated with decisions to choose pay cuts over layoffs; however, these costs interact such that managers low in communion in a distant culture express a higher preference for layoffs. These findings illustrate the combined influence of economic, organizational, and dispositional factors on manager decisions about the extent and form of labor cost reductions due to sales declines.

To explain how technology will replace a great deal of human labor in knowledge markets using a theory of reasoned action applied to demand and theories of procedural rationality, cost structure and system dynamics applied to supply.

Two illustrative scenarios are presented. The first is a third-party Best Treatments site, and its effect on the expert advice pharmaceutical representatives provide doctors. The second scenario is an online higher education business course module with embedded AI.

Both scenarios demonstrate the advantages of online expertise and teaching platforms over the in-person alternative in variable and marginal cost, ease and convenience of use, quality conformance, scalability, knowledge reach and depth and most importantly, speed of evolutionary adaptability. Despite such overwhelming advantages, a number of reasons why the substitution might be slowed are presented, and some strategies firms might adopt are discussed. Opportunities for service scholars to confirm, challenge and extend the conclusions are presented throughout the paper.

Increasing cost structure and adaptability advantages of online technology and AI over in-person delivery of expertise and training services are demonstrated. It is also demonstrated that the innovation-imitation cycle is accelerating because of exogenous innovation in knowledge access and online influence networks and an endogenous effect where imitators accelerate their innovation that drives innovators to accelerate their innovation, which drives imitators to further accelerate their imitation.

Based on upper echelons theory, this study aims to explore the impact of senior management’s academic experience on corporate risk-taking and analyze the pathways and potential moderating effects of this relationship.

This study uses panel data of Chinese A-share listed companies in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2020. An ordinary least squares model is used to test the hypothesis.

The results indicate that senior management’s academic experience suppresses corporate risk-taking, with investment level and cash reserves being two important channels. The moderation effect test shows that the inhibitory effect becomes more pronounced when senior managers with academic backgrounds occupy chief executive officer or chief financial officer roles. Conversely, when academic executives possess overseas/financial backgrounds or increase their compensation incentives, the strength of this disincentive effect diminishes. Moreover, our extended research finds that this inhibitory effect is more pronounced in state-owned companies and those within a strong Confucian cultural environment. Additionally, senior management’s academic experience positively correlates with both current and future market returns and company value.

This study contributes to the development of top management team building and corporate governance practices. Additionally, it furnishes investors with valuable insights into assessing the risk level of companies through the characteristics of their top management teams, thereby facilitating informed investment decision-making and improving capital market resource allocation efficiency.

The research explores how these volunteering experiences in Chinese art museums influence students’ future teaching careers and employability.

Our study delves into the educational value of art museum volunteering for higher education students, focussing particularly on those majoring in elementary education. Utilising a triangulation methodology that includes questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and observations, we collected data from 30 art museums across 17 provinces in China. Our research aims to understand how these volunteering experiences influence students’ future teaching careers and employability.

The study examines the types of educational activities offered, the art education experiences gained and the impact on students’ skills. The findings suggest that volunteering enhances students’ practical skills in art education, creativity, critical thinking, cultural understanding and employability, contributing positively to their future educator roles. The findings highlight the importance of partnerships between museums and higher education institutions to improve the quality of art education and the professional preparation of future educators.

We identified some limitations. Because the period of investigation for this study was limited to a recent year, the unique strategies and techniques for conducting educational practices varied from museum to museum, resulting in different barriers and opportunities for improvement for volunteers. This study did not conduct a detailed analysis of gender- and region-specific differences, nor did it include interviews with museum educators and educational program spokespersons or an analysis of their opinions.

Our research fills a notable gap in the existing literature by focussing on the Asian context and underscores the importance of collaborative efforts between museums and higher education institutions.

This study aims to explore families that travel with children, as focuses on vulnerabilities, resource constraints and service exclusion through the lens of transformative service research (TSR). This paper investigates: how the experienced vulnerability of these families is shaped by structural, interpersonal and intrapersonal constraints, and how the constraints influence the family tourist-resource interaction in the air travel service encounter.

In total, 2,855 reviews of the family tourists with children were analyzed with text mining, t-test and multidimensional scaling using the interpretive language R to answer the research questions with analyses on unstructured (e.g. text) and structured (e.g. consumer rating) data.

The findings of the empirical investigation answered how experienced vulnerability is shaped by structural, interpersonal and intrapersonal resource constraints and the types of family tourist-resource interaction in the travel service encounter to understand the resource constraints. The findings of this paper help examine family tourism experiences from a value formation perspective to unfold how stakeholders interact to form value while increasing and decreasing their well-being by the value of co-creation and co-destruction.

This research helps advance the TSR’s service inclusion framework by enabling opportunities, offering choice, relieving suffering and fostering happiness with empirical findings in travel service encounters. These findings are particularly insightful to family tourists with children struggling with unfair access and treatment in aeromobility service encounters, which may help enhance the well-being of individuals and communities.

This paper aims to provide a critical reflection on the impact of the gig economy on the hospitality workforce. The impact of the gig economy on hospitality workforce management is explored, with the paper delving into both theoretical insights and practical implications.

This paper offers reflections on the emerging trend of the gig economy and its impacts on the hospitality workforce, based on evidence collected from the selected literature, industry report and authors’ personal reflections. A micro-meso-macro analytical framework was also applied to assist authors in building the arguments and propositions.

The findings not only revealed the impacts of the gig economy on the hospitality workforce at micro-meso-macro levels but also underscored its close relationships with various concepts in the hospitality management literature. Both future research directions and practical implications are provided.

Amid the gig economy’s transformative influence, stakeholders must continually innovate for an empowering and secure work environment. A holistic approach is necessary to establish a harmonious gig ecosystem, ensuring fair treatment, benefits and protection for workers while fostering growth and well-being.

Throughout the paper, a critical reflection on the impact of the gig economy on the hospitality workforce is presented, along with suggestions for coping with current labor issues in hospitality and tourism. Future research directions are outlined.