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The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent of online communication by festivals regarding their sustainability practices using Cultivation Theory as the framework to determine perceived value creation.

A mixed method approach was utilized to achieve data triangulation through a content analysis of websites, content analysis of social media sites as well as interviews.

Findings indicated that 64% of festivals did not communicate any sustainable practices through their websites and only 6% communicated via social media. The most common sustainability practices communicated were waste management and sustainable transportation, yet few festivals engaged in effective, consistent and sufficient marketing of initiatives to festivalgoers. Best practice festivals (having communicated 5.47 initiatives or more) were found to have been significantly more likely than non-best practice festivals to be music festivals and have been in operation longer. Best practice festivals were also more likely than non-best practice festivals to have sustainability engrained into their corporate philosophy via a communicated sustainable vision and mission. Interviews revealed that most festivals did not have a designated role responsible for all sustainable initiatives and the responsibility was often taken on by volunteers or festival organizers. Festival organizers that communicated sustainability initiatives efficiently, consistently, and sufficiently perceived these efforts to benefit the festivals value amongst festivalgoers and host communities. Propensity to communicate sustainability initiatives was found to have been impacted by awareness, categorization, timing, policy and funding.

While the findings are limited to the country of Canada and the extent of communication on websites and social media platforms as well as those festivals who participated, interviews helped to overcome these limitations as they gained an understanding of what was undertaken but not necessarily communicated.

The findings generated from this study could be used as a guide for establishing a benchmark for festivals regarding sustainable communication as well as strategies for overall corporate responsibility. Content regarding sustainability at festivals is scarce, as is information on festival communication. As a result, this paper seeks to understand the sustainable initiatives that are being communicated by festivals.

This is the first time Cultivation Theory was used within a tourism context and may be a useful tool to determine value creation. Through Cultivation Theory, festival organizers believed to have the ability to impact perceived value of the festival by implementing efficient, consistent and sufficient communication of sustainability initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to differentiate the production process within services from the dominant manufacturing-based production process, with the objective of delineating the production process in services and highlighting its implication for service productivity.

This study critically reviewed the extant literature on the production processes in manufacturing and services from a multidisciplinary perspective and proposed a framework for the service production process and its relationship with service productivity.

The production process for services differs from the dominant manufacturing-based production process and entails an input, transformation process and outcome dimensions. Therefore, any advancement in services, particularly the conceptualisation and measurement of service productivity, is dependent on the application of a service-specific production process.

The understanding and delineation of the production process in services would further scholarly understanding of what is means to be productive in services and the impact on the validity of the conceptualisation and measurement of service productivity and other service-related concepts.

The proposed service-based production process can further managerial understanding of the measurement and management of productivity in services.

This paper delineates the production process in services and highlighted its implication for service productivity. This study, therefore, is a step forward in developing service-specific concepts and measures, particularly service productivity.

Presents an overview of the timeshare industry in South Africa. Gives special attention to the reasons why the industry continues to grow, despite major failures. Emphasis is placed on the creation of the property trust in which the timeshare properties are registered with the timeshare investors as beneficiaries. Concludes that the growth of the timeshare market in South Africa is attributed to the corrective measures and bona fide intentions of the current operators.

“I need to find five Supreme Court cases dealing with civil rights between the years 1900–1950.” “Can you help me find information about Plessy vs. Ferguson?” These are just a few examples of the many questions I've received about Supreme Court cases. Any reference librarian at an academic institution without a law library will recognize the frustration many librarians experience when confronted with these questions. Until we become familiar with legal reference books and legal citations, we may feel that serendipity is the only way to find Supreme Court cases. A librarian may fumble through many volumes of legal materials, hoping the patron has a correct date, case name, or citation; or, for that matter, that they even have a case name or citation.

Zoos are important urban tourism attractions. The challenge for zoos is finding a balance between attracting visitors and enhancing education and conservation management. This research contributes to a greater understanding of the conservation intentions of zoo visitors and how zoos can emphasise conservation management principles sustainably. This study aims to identify the variables that encourage conservation intentions among visitors to a South African zoo.

A destination-based survey was conducted in 2019 at the Johannesburg Zoo, and 445 questionnaires were administered through convenience sampling.

Exploratory factor analyses identified visitors’ conservation awareness because of zoos (pre-conscious, conscious and unconscious), behavioural intentions (advocating and supporting), motives (engagement, edutainment and escapism) and satisfaction (interaction and facility quality, and service and interpretation quality). The behavioural intentions were the dependent variables. Advocating conservation intentions (ACI) is an active role where zoo visitors feel a strong responsibility towards conservation and encourage others to the conservation cause. Supporting conservation intentions (SCI) relates more to loyalty towards visiting the zoo and subsequently supporting conservation. Stepwise linear regression analyses revealed that enhancing ACI relies on SCI, edutainment, conscious awareness, service and interpretation quality and total spending. However, enhancing SCI relies on ACI, interaction and facility quality and the motive, escapism, while engagement revealed a negative relationship.

The results show that zoos can encourage SCI to ACI by using interactive and entertaining interpretations to teach visitors about the zoo’s mandate and the importance of conservation while balancing their need to escape.

This paper presents a new framework to predict a structure’s effective properties and sensitivities to multiple simultaneous uncertain endogenous parameters. The methodology is based on the use of fuzzy sets and this paper extends the fuzzy set theory to a dynamic finite element analysis of engineering systems containing uncertainty on material properties. A general algorithm, which can resolve the uncertain eigenvalue problem by using a Neumann expansion, is studied. This algorithm is applied to the study of the modal behavior of structures presenting uncertain material properties. Finally, the entropy and the specificity of fuzzy responses lead to the identification of a plate structure’s most sensitive eigenvalue to uncertain sources.

This study aims to answer the following question: How can customer readiness be instrumental in non-technology-based service delivery?

Using a field study, this research examines the role of customer readiness in customer participation in non-technology-based service delivery and its indirect effects on such customer outcomes as perceived service quality, customer satisfaction and customer willingness to recommend.

The results show that customer readiness is a second-order construct. It has a significant impact on customer participation in service delivery, which in turn impacts three key service outcomes: customer perceived service quality, customer satisfaction and customer willingness to recommend. Four factors influencing customer readiness (consumer previous experience, consumer desire for control, consumer perceived risk and customer organizational socialization) are also empirically evaluated.

Some limitations of the study are related to sample size and use of a type of services. The research tested 13 hypotheses with a limited sample size in one context. A better representation of the population and a more generalizable outcome require more representative samples and studies in various contexts such as banking, hotel services or health care services. This study demonstrated the importance of customer readiness for effective participation in non-technology-based service delivery; it does not address the impact of customer readiness on participation in the context of technology-based services. Future research may also shed light on when and why customers choose technology-based services versus non-technology-based services.

Effective customer participation in service delivery can, and should, benefit from boosting customer readiness.

This research shows the impact of customer readiness on non-technology-based service delivery, more specifically, the impact of customer readiness on customer participation in this type of service delivery. Customer readiness has been found to be beneficial in the provision of technology-based services; yet, its role in the provision of non-technology-based services has not been thoroughly evaluated.

Despite the innovation and performance of venture capital (VC)-backed firms receiving extensive attention, how and under what conditions VC influences innovation and performance remains unclear. The present paper draws on organizational learning (OL) theory to examine the moderating effect of syndication on backed firms.

Drawing on a literature review that connects OL and innovation to the performance of VC-backed firms, this study examines the effects of OL on innovation and firm performance among these firms by questioning the moderating effect of VC syndication. A sample of 78 VC-backed firms was used to test the robustness of the proposed model and causal relationships through the use of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The empirical evidence demonstrates that the intervention of venture capitalists can not only stimulate innovation, but also have a significantly positive effect on firm performance. Furthermore, the evidence reveals that syndication of VC investment supports backed firms in improving the firms' performance and generating innovation from acquired knowledge.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first in North Africa that focuses on the moderating effects of venture capital syndication on the relationships between OL, innovation and firm performance.

The ‘chip carrier’ or CC is an intermediate support, hermetically sealed or otherwise, (of alumina, beryllium oxide or plastic) requires to connect an integrated circuit chip with numerous output pins to the outside world. This carrier at present represents the best compromise in terms of technology and economy, because of the use of standard multi‐source chips and the simple testing it permits.